TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK.

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 these 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.

149

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 VOGELWEID.1

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,

(1) Walter von der Vogelweid, or Bird-Meadow, was one of the principal Minnesingers of the thirteenth century. He triumphed over Heinrich von Ofterdingen in that poetic contest at Wartburg Castle, known in literary history as the War of Wartburg.

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.

Til 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 bell rang noontide,
Gathered the unwelcome guests.

Then in vain, with cries discordant,
Clamorous 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.

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;