"Never art thou mother of mine,
For my mother was both fair and fine.

"My mother was white, with cheeks of red, But thou art pale, and like to the dead."

"How should I be fair and fine?

I have been dead; pale cheeks are mine.

"How should I be white and red,
So long, so long have I been dead?"

When she came in at the chamber door,
There stood the small children weeping sore.

One she braided, another she brushed,
The third she lifted, the fourth she hushed.

The fifth she took on her lap and pressed,
As if she would suckle it at her breast.

Then to her eldest daughter said she, "Do thou bid Svend Dyring come hither to me.*

Into the chamber when he came

She spake to him in anger and shame.

"I left behind me both ale and bread; My children hunger and are not fed.

"I left behind me quilts of blue;
My children lie on the straw ye strew.

"I left behind me the great waxlight; My children lie in the dark at night.

"If I come again unto your hall, As cruel a fate shall you befall!

"Now crows the cock with feathers red; Back to the earth must all the dead.

"Now crows the cock with feathers swart; The gates of heaven fly wide apart.

Now crows the cock with feathers white;
I can abide no longer to-night."

Whenever they heard the watch-dogs wail, They gave the children bread and ale.

Whenever they heard the watch-dogs bay, They feared lest the dead were on their way.

Whenever they heard the watch-dogs bark, I myself was young!

They feared the dead out there in the dark. Fair words gladden so many a heart.

INTERLUDE.

TOUCHED by the pathos of these rhymes,
The Theologian said: “All praise
Be to the ballads of old times

And to the bards of simple ways,

Who walked with Nature hand in hand,
Whose country was their Holy Land,

Whose singing robes were homespun brown
From looms of their own native town,
Which they were not ashamed to wear,
And not of silk or sendal gay,
Nor decked with fanciful array

Of cockle-shells from Outre-Mer."

To whom the Student answered: "Yes;
All praise and honor! I confess

That bread and ale, home-baked, home-brewed,
Are wholesome and nutritious food,

But not enough for all our needs;

Poets

the best of them

-

are birds

Of passage; where their instinct leads
They range abroad for thoughts and words,
And from all climes bring home the seeds
That germinate in flowers or weeds.
They are not fowls in barnyards born
To cackle o'er a grain of corn;
And, if you shut the horizon down
To the small limits of their town,
What do you but degrade your bard
Till he at last becomes as one
Who thinks the all-encircling sun
Rises and sets in his back yard?"

The Theologian said again:
"It may be so; yet I maintain
That what is native still is best,
And little care I for the rest.
'T is a long story; time would fail
To tell it, and the hour is late;
We will not waste it in debate,
But listen to our Landlord's tale."

And thus the sword of Damocles
Descending not by slow degrees,

But suddenly, on the Landlord fell,
Who blushing, and with much demur
And many vain apologies,
Plucking up heart, began to tell
The Rhyme of one Sir Christopher.

THE LANDLORD'S TALE.

THE RHYME OF SIR CHRISTOPHER.

Written February 25, 1873.

IT was Sir Christopher Gardiner,
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre,
From Merry England over the sea,
Who stepped upon this continent
As if his august presence lent
A glory to the colony.

You should have seen him in the street
Of the little Boston of Winthrop's time,
His rapier dangling at his feet,
Doublet and hose and boots complete,
Prince Rupert hat with ostrich plume,
Gloves that exhaled a faint perfume,
Luxuriant curls and air sublime,
And superior manners now obsolete!

He had a way of saying things

That made one think of courts and kings,
And lords and ladies of high degree;
So that not having been at court

Seemed something very little short
Of treason or lese-majesty,

Such an accomplished knight was he.

His dwelling was just beyond the town,
At what he called his country-seat;
For, careless of Fortune's smile or frown,
And weary grown of the world and its ways,
He wished to pass the rest of his days
In a private life and a calm retreat.

But a double life was the life he led,
And, while professing to be in search
Of a godly course, and willing, he said,
Nay, anxious to join the Puritan church,
He made of all this but small account,
And passed his idle hours instead
With roystering Morton of Merry Mount,
That pettifogger from Furnival's Inn,

Lord of misrule and riot and sin,

Who looked on the wine when it was red.

This country-seat was little more

Than a cabin of logs; but in front of the door

A modest flower-bed thickly sown

With sweet alyssum and columbine

Made those who saw it at once divine

The touch of some other hand than his own.

And first it was whispered, and then it was known,

That he in secret was harboring there

A little lady with golden hair,

Whom he called his cousin, but whom he had wed

In the Italian manner, as men said,

And great was the scandal everywhere.