TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-
BOOK.

WELCOME, my old friend,
Welcome to a foreign fireside,
While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world

Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee.

There are marks of age,

There are thumb-marks on thy margin, Made by hands that clasped thee rudely, At the alehouse.

Soiled and dull thou art;

Yellow are thy time-worn pages,
As the russet, rain-molested
Leaves of autumn.

Thou art stained with wine
Scattered from hilarious goblets,
As the leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,
When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,

When I paused to hear

The old ballad of King Christian
Shouted from suburban taverns
In the twilight.

Thou recallest bards,
Who, in solitary chambers,

And with hearts by passion wasted,
Wrote thy pages.

Thou recallest homes

Where thy songs of love and friendship

Made the gloomy Northern winter
Bright as summer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,
Chanted staves of these old ballads
To the Vikings.

Once in Elsinore,

At the court of old King Hamlet, Yorick and his boon companions Sang these ditties.

Once Prince Frederick's Guard

Sang them in their smoky barracks;~
Suddenly the English cannon
Joined the chorus !

Peasants in the field,
Sailors on the roaring ocean,

Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics,
All have sung them.

Thou hast been their friend ;

They, alas! have left thee friendless!
Yet at least by one warm fireside
Art thou welcome.

And, as swallows build

In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys,
So thy twittering songs shall nestle
In my bosom,

Quiet, close, and warm,
Sheltered from all molestation,
And recalling by their voices
Youth and travel.

WALTER VON DER VOGEL-
WEID.

VOGELWEID the Minnesinger,
When he left this world of ours,
Laid his body in the cloister,

Under Würtzburg's minster towers. And he gave the monks his treasures, Gave them all with this behest: They should feed the birds at noontide Daily on his place of rest;

Saying, "From these wandering minstrels

I have learned the art of song; Let me now repay the lessons

They have taught so well and long.
Thus the bard of love departed;
And, fulfilling his desire,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir.
Day by day, o'er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.

On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place,
On the pavement, on the tombstone,
On the poet's sculptured face,

On the cross-bars of each window,

On the lintel of each door, They renewed the War of Wartburg, Which the bard had fought before. There they sang their merry carols, Sang their lauds on every side; And the name their voices uttered Was the name of Vogelweid. Till at length the portly abbot Murmured, "Why this waste of food? Be it changed to loaves henceforward For our fasting brotherhood."

Then in vain o'er tower and turret,
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bells rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.
then in vain, with cries discordant,
Ciamorous round the Gothic spire,
Screamed the feathered Minnesingers
For the children of the choir.

'Time has long effaced the inscriptions
On the cloister's funeral stones,
And tradition only tells us
Where repose the poet's bones.
But around the vast cathedral,

By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid.

DRINKING SONG.

INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE
PITCHER.

COME, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus !
Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,

And possessing youth eternal. Round about him, fair Bacchantes, Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards sing delirious verses.

Thus he won, through all the nations,
Bloodless victories, and the farmer'
Bore, as trophies and oblations,
Vines for banners, ploughs for armor.
Judged by no o'erzealous rigor,
Much this mystic throng expresses:
Bacchus was the type of vigor,
And Silenus of excesses.
These are ancient ethnic revels,

Of a faith long since forsaken;
Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.
Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
Claudius, though he sang of flagons
And huge tankards filled with
Rhenish,

From that fiery blood of dragons
Never would his own replenish.
Even Redi, though he chaunted

Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.
Then with water fill the pitcher

Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus' tables.
Come, old friend, sit down and listen!
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.

L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!" JACQUES BRIDAINE. SOMEWHAT back from the village street Stands the old-fashioned country-seat. Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,-
"Forever- never!
Never forever!"

By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say, at each chamber.
door,

"Forever- never!
Never-forever!"

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude

Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,

And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe, -
"Forever- never!
Never forever!"

In that ansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;

The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased, -
"Forever- never!
Never forever!"
There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming
strayed;

O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient timepiece

told,

Forever-never! Never-forever!"

From that chamber, clothed in white, The bride came forth on her wedding night;

There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that followed the
prayer,

Was heard the old clock on the stair,"Forever never!

Never forever!"

All are scattered now and fled, Some are married, some are dead; And when I ask, with throbs of pain, "Ah! when shall they all meet again?" As in the days long since gone by, The ancient timepiece makes reply, "Forever never!

Never-forever!"

Never here, forever there,
Where all parting, pain, and care,
And death, and time shall disappear,
Forever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,
"Forever- never!
Never-forever!"

THE ARROW AND THE SONG.

I SHOT an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song

Long, long afterward in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

Thy steps are by the farmer's prayers attended;

Like flames upon an altar shine the sheaves;

And, following thee, in thy ovation splendid,

Thine almoner, the wind, scatters the golden leaves !

DANTE.

TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom,

With thoughtful pace, and sad, majestic eyes,

Stern thoughts and awful from thy soul arise,

Like Farinata from his fiery tomb. Thy sacred song is like the trumpofdoom; Yet in thy heart what human sympathies,

What soft compassion glows, as in the skies

The tender stars their clouded lamps relume!

Methinks I see thee stand, with pallid cheeks,

By Fra Hilario in his diocese,

As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks,

The ascending sunbeams mark the day's decrease;

And, as he asks what there the stran

THE HEMLOCK TREE.

FROM THE GERMAN.

O HEMLOCK tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches! Green not alone in summer time, But in the winter's frost and rime ! O hemlock tree! O hemlock tree! how faithful are thy branches!

O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom !

To love me in prosperity,
And leave me in adversity!

O maiden fair! O maiden fair! how faithless is thy bosom !

The nightingale, the nightingale, thou tak'st for thine example!

So long as summer laughs she sings, But in the autumn spreads her wings.

The nightingale, the nightingale, tho tak'st for thine example !

The meadow brook, the meadow brook, is mirror of thy falsehood!

It flows so long as falls the rain,
In drought its springs soon dry

again.

The meadow brook, the meadow brook, is mirror of thy falsehood!

ANNIE OF THARAW.

FROM THE LOW GERMAN OF SIMON

DACH.

ANTIE of Tharaw, my true love of old, She is my life, and my goods, and my gold.

Annie of Tharaw, her heart once again To me has surrendered in joy and in pain.

Annie of Tharaw, my riches, my good, Thou, my soul, my flesh and my blood!

Then come the wild weather, come sleet or come snow,

We will stand by each other, however it blow.

Oppression, and sickness, and sorrow, and pain

Shall be to our true love as links to the chain.

As the palm-tree standeth so straight and so tall,

The more the hail beats, and the more the rains fall,

Some seek for dissension, and trouble, and strife;

Like a dog and a cat live such man and wife.

Annie of Tharaw, such is not our love; Thou art my lambkin, my chick, and my dove.

Whate'er my desire is, in thine may be seen;

I am king of the household, and thou art its queen.

It is this, O my Annie, my heart's sweetest rest,

That makes of us twain but one soul in one breast.

This turns to a heaven the hut where we dwell;

While wrangling soon changes a home to a hell.