The line of life is crossed by many marks. Shame! shame! Oh, you have wronged the maid who loved you!

How could you do it?

Vict. I never loved a maid; For she I loved was then a maid no more. Prec. How know you that? Vict.

keep it

As a memento of the Gypsy camp

In Guadarrama, and the fortune-teller Who sent me back to wed a widowed maid.

Pray, let me have the ring.
Prec.

No, never! never! I will not part with it, even when I die ; But bid my nurse fold my pale fingers thus,

That it may not fall from them. "T is a token

Of a beloved friend, who is no more.

Vict.
How? dead?
Prec. Yes; dead to me; and worse than

dead.

He is estranged! And yet I keep this

ring.

I will rise with it from my grave hereafter,

To prove to him that I was never false.
Vict. (aside). Be still, my swelling
heart! one moment, still!
Why, 't is the folly of a love-sick girl.
Come, give it me, or I will say 't is mine,
And that you stole it.

Prec.

Whispered the secret.

Prec. There, take back your gold! Your hand is cold, like a deceiver's hand! There is no blessing in its charity! Make her your wife, for you have been abused;

And you shall mend your fortunes, mending hers.

Vict. (aside). How like an angel's speaks the tongue of woman,

When pleading in another's cause her

own!

Vict. Forgive me, sweet! for what I

made thee suffer.

Think'st thou this heart could feel a mo

ment's joy,

Thou being absent? Oh, believe it not ! Indeed, since that sad hour I have not

slept,

For thinking of the wrong I did to thee! Dost thou forgive me? Say, wilt thou forgive me?

Prec. I have forgiven thee. Ere those words of anger

mances,

All chaste embraces on the public stage,
All soft adventures, which the liberal stars
Have winked at, as the natural course of
things,

Have been surpassed here by my friend, the student,

And this sweet Gypsy lass, fair Preciosa!
Prec. Señor Hypolito! I kiss your hand.
Pray, shall I tell your fortune?
Hyp.

Not to-night; For, should you treat me as you did Victorian,

And send me back to marry maids forlorn, My wedding day would last from now till Christmas.

Chispa (within). What ho! the Gypsies, ho! Beltran Cruzado! Halloo! halloo ! halloo ! halloo !

(Enters booted, with a whip and lantern.)

Let me sleep on, and do not wake me yet! Repeat thy story! Say I'm not deceived! Say that I do not dream! I am awake; This is the Gypsy camp; this is Victorian, And this his friend, Hypolito! Speak! speak!

Let me not wake and find it all a dream! Vict. It is a dream, sweet child! a waking dream,

A blissful certainty, a vision bright Of that rare happiness, which even on earth

Heaven gives to those it loves. Now art thou rich,

As thou wast ever beautiful and good;
And I am now the beggar.

Prec. (giving him her hand). I have still A hand to give.

Chispa (aside). And I have two to take. I've heard my grandmother say, that Heaven gives almonds To those who have no teeth. to crack.

That's nuts

I've teeth to spare, but where shall I find almonds?

Vict. What more of this strange story? Chispa. Nothing more. Your friend, Don Carlos, is now at the vil

lage

Showing to Pedro Crespo, the Alcalde,

Monk. Is this the road to Segovia ? Shep. It is, your reverence.

Monk. How far is it?

Shep. I do not know.

ley?

Shep. San Ildefonso.

Monk. A long way to breakfast.

Shep. Ay, marry.

Monk. Are there robbers in these mountains?

Shep. Yes, and worse than that.
Monk. What?

Hyp. 'Tis a notable old town, Boasting an ancient Roman aqueduct, And an Alcázar, builded by the Moors, Wherein, you may remember, poor Gil Blas Was fed on Pan del Rey. Oh, many a time Out of its grated windows have I looked Hundreds of feet plumb down to the Eresma,

(They descend the pass. CHISPA remains behind.) Chispa. I have a father, too, but he is a dead one. Alas and alack-a-day! Poor was I born, and poor do I remain. I neither win nor lose. Thus I wag through the world, half the time on foot, and the other half walking; and always as merry as a thunder-storm in the night. And so we plough along, as the fly said to the ox. Who knows what may happen? Patience, and shuffle the cards! I am not yet so bald that you can see my brains; and perhaps, after all, I shall some day go to Rome, and come back Saint Peter. Benedicite! [Exit. (A pause. Then enter BARTOLOMÉ wildly, as if in pursuit, with a carbine in his hand.)

Bart. They passed this way. I hear their horses' hoofs ! Yonder I see them! Come, sweet cara

millo,

The Belfry of Bruges and other Poems was published December 23, 1845, but the greater part of the volume had already appeared in the illustrated edition of Mr. Longfellow's poems published earlier in the year in Philadelphia, as well as in the pages of Graham's Magazine, which at this time was the most frequent vehicle of his writing.

The poem which gives the title to the volume was the product of his excursion in Europe in the summer of 1842. While on his way to the watercure at Marienberg on the Rhine, he spent a few days in Belgium, and here is the entry which he makes in his diary:

May 30. In the evening took the railway from Ghent to Bruges. Stopped at La Fleur de Blé attracted by the name, and found it a good hotel. It was not yet night; and I strolled through the fine old streets and felt myself a hundred years old. The chimes seemed to be ringing incessantly; and the air of repose and antiquity was delightful. . . . Oh, those chimes, those chines! how deliciously they lull one to sleep! The little bells, with their clear, liquid notes, like the voices of boys in a choir, and the solemn bass of the great bell tolling in, like the voice of a friar !

May 31. Rose before five and climbed the high bel

fry which was once crowned by the gilded copper dragon now at Ghent. The carillon of forty-eight bells; the little chamber in the tower; the machinery, like a huge barrel-organ, with keys like a musical instrument for the carilloneur; the view from the tower; the singing of swallows with the chimes; the fresh morning air; the mist in the horizon; the red roofs far below; the canal, like a silver clasp, linking the city with the sea, how much to remember!

From some expressions in a letter to Freiligrath it would seem that this poem and Nuremberg formed part of a plan which the poet had designed of a series of travel-sketches in verse, a plan which in a desultory way he may be said to have been executing all his days and to have carried out systematically in another shape in his collection of Poems of Places.

The contents of this division are the same as in the volume so entitled, except that a group of six translations has been withheld, to be placed with the other translated pieces at the end of the volume; except also that to the Sonnets is added the personal one entitled Mezzo Cammin, written at this time and first printed in the Life.

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES

CARILLON

IN the ancient town of Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city,
As the evening shades descended,
Low and loud and sweetly blended,
Low at times and loud at times,
And changing like a poet's rhymes,
Rang the beautiful wild chimes
From the Belfry in the market
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

Then, with deep sonorous clangor
Calmly answering their sweet anger,
When the wrangling bells had ended,
Slowly struck the clock eleven,
And, from out the silent heaven,
Silence on the town descended.
Silence, silence everywhere,
On the earth and in the air,
Save that footsteps here and there
Of some burgher home returning,
By the street lamps faintly burning,
For a moment woke the echoes
Of the ancient town of Bruges.

But amid my broken slumbers
Still I heard those magic numbers,
As they loud proclaimed the flight
And stolen marches of the night;
Till their chimes in sweet collision
Mingled with each wandering vision,
Mingled with the fortune-telling
Gypsy-bands of dreams and fancies,
Which amid the waste expanses
Of the silent land of trances
Have their solitary dwelling;
All else seemed asleep in Bruges,
In the quaint old Flemish city.

And I thought how like these chimes
Are the poet's airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities!
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go their ways,
Hearing the music as they pass,
But deeming it no more, alas!
Than the hollow sound of brass.

Yet perchance a sleepless wight,
Lodging at some humble inn
In the narrow lanes of life,
When the dusk and hush of night
Shut out the incessant din

Of daylight and its toil and strife,
May listen with a calm delight
To the poet's melodies,

Till he hears, or dreams he hears,
Intermingled with the song,

Thoughts that he has cherished long ;
Hears amid the chime and singing
The bells of his own village ringing,
And wakes, and finds his slumberous

eyes

Wet with most delicious tears.

Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay
In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé,
Listening with a wild delight

To the chimes that, through the night,
Rang their changes from the Belfry
Of that quaint old Flemish city.

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES

In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,

And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray, Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there, Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,

But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high;

And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the sky.