“ 'Tis work, work, work," he muttered,

" And for rest a snuffle of psalms !” He smote on his leathern apron

With his brown and waxen palms.

“O for the purple harvests.

Of the days when I was young!
For the merry grape-stained maidens,

And the pleasant songs they sung !

“O for the breath of vineyards,

Of apples and nuts and wine !
For an oar to row and a breeze to blow

Down the grand old river Rhine!”

A tear in his blue eye glistened

And dropped on his beard so gray. “Old, old am I,” said Keezar,

66 And the Rhine flows far away!'

But a cunning man was the cobbler ;

He could call the birds from the trees, Charm the black snake out of the ledges,

And bring back the swarming bees.

All the virtues of herbs and metals,

All the lore of the woods, he knew, And the arts of the Old World mingled

With the marvels of the New.

Well he knew the tricks of magic,

And the lapstone on his knee
Had the gift of the Mormon's goggles

Or the stone of Doctor Dee.

For the mighty master Agrippa

Wrought it with spell and rhyme From a fragment of mystic moonstone

In the tower of Nettesheim.

To a cobbler Minnesinger

The marvellous stone gave he, And he gave it, in turn, to Keezar,

Who brought it over the sea.

He held up that mystic lapstone,

He held it up like a lens, And he counted the long years coming

By twenties and by tens.

“One hundred years," quoth Keezar,

“ And fifty have I told : Now open the new before me,

And shut me out the old !”

Like a cloud of mist, the blackness

Rolled from the magic stone, And a marvellous picture mingled

The unknown and the known.

Still ran the stream to the river,

And river and ocean joined ; And there were the bluffs and the blue sea-line,

And cold north hills behind.

But the mighty forest was broken

By many a steepled town,
By many a white-walled farm-house,

And many a garner brown.

Turning a score of mill-wheels,

The stream no more ran free ; White sails on the winding river,

White sails on the far-off sea.

Below in the noisy village

The flags were floating gay,

And shone on a thousand faces

The light of a holiday.

Swiftly the rival ploughmen

Turned the brown earth from their shares ; Here were the farmer's treasures,

There were the craftsman's wares.

Golden the good-wife's butter,

Ruby her currant-wine;
Grand were the strutting turkeys,

Fat were the beeves and swine.

Yellow and red were the apples,

And the ripe pears russet-brown, And the peaches had stolen blushes

From the girls who shook them down.

And with blooms of hill and wild-wood,

That shame the toil of art, Mingled the gorgeous blossoms

Of the garden's tropic heart.