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.

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,

THE EVENING STAR.

Lo! in the painted oriel of the West, Whose panes the sunken sun incarnadines,

Like a fair lady at her casement, shines The evening star, the star of love and rest!

And then anon she doth herself divest Of all her radiant garments, and reclines

Behind the sombre screen of yonder pines,

With slumber and soft dreams of love oppressed.

O my beloved, my sweet Hesperus ! My morning and my evening star of love!

My best and gentlest lady! even thus, As that fair planet in the sky above, Dost thou retire unto thy rest at night, And from thy darkened window fades the light.