Worn with speed is my good steed, And I march me hurried, worried; Onward, caballito mio,

With the white star in thy forehead! Onward, for here comes the Ronda, And I hear their rifles crack!

Ay, jaléo! Ay, ay, jaléo ! Ay, jaléo! They cross our track. (Song dies away. Enter PRCIOSA, on horseback, attended by VICTORIAN, HYPOLITO, DON CARLOS, and CHISPA, on foot and armed.) Vict. This is the highest point. Here let us rest.

street,

And saying, "Hark! she comes!" O father! father!

(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 caramillo,

This serenade shall be the Gipsy's last! (Fires down the pass.)

Ha! ha! Well whistled, my sweet caramillo !

Well whistled!-I have missed her!Oh, my God!

(The shot is returned. BARTOLOMÉ falls.)

Storm-wind of the equinox,

Landward in his wrath he scourges

The toiling surges,

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks:
From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the tumbling surf, that buries
The Orkneyan skerries,
Answering the hoarse Hebrides;
And from wrecks of ships, and drifting
Spars, uplifting

On the desolate, rainy seas;-
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless main;

Till in sheltered coves, and reaches
Of sandy beaches,

All have found repose again.

So when storms of wild emotion

Strike the ocean

Of the poet's soul, ere long
From each cave and rocky fastness,

In its vastness,

Floats some fragment of a song:
From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian

In the tropic elime of Youth;
From the strong Will, and the Endeavour
That forever

Wrestle with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;-
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart:
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded

Household words, no more depart.

THE DAY IS DONE.

THE day is done, and the darkness
Falls from the wings of Night,
As a feather is wafted downward
From an eagle in its flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist, And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me, That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,
That is not akin to pain,
And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.
Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay, That shall soothe this restless feeling, And banish the thoughts of day. Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime, Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.
For, like strains of martial music,
Their mighty thoughts suggest
Life's endless toil and endeavour;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,
Whose songs gushed from his heart,
As showers from the clouds of summer,
Or tears from the eyelids start;
Who, through long days of labour,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet
The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

H

AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY.

THE day is ending,
The night is descending;
The marsh is frozen,

The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes,
The red sun flashes
On village windows
That glimmer red.

The snow recommences:
The buried fences
Mark no longer

The road o'er the plain,

While through the meadows,
Like fearful shadows,
Slowly passes

A funeral train.
The bell is pealing,
And every feeling
Within me responds
To the dismal knell;
Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing
And tolling within

Like a funeral bell.

TO AN OLD DANISH SONG

BOOK.

WELCOME, my old friend,

Welcome to a foreign fireside,

While the sullen gales of autumn
Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world

Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee.

There are marks of age,

There are thumb-marks on thy margin, Made by hands that clasped thee rudely At the alehouse.

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.

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.

[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.] 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,
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.
Till 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.

• 99

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.

DRINKING SONG.

INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE
PITCHER.

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;
Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,

Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,

And possessing youth eternal. Round about him, fair Bacchantes,

Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards sing delirious verses. Thus he won, through all the nations, Bloodless victories, and the farmer Bore, as trophies and oblations,

Vines for banners, ploughs for armour. Judged by no o'erzealous rigour,

Much this mystic throng expresses: Bacchus was the type of vigour,

And Silenus of excesses. These are ancient ethnic revels,

Of a faith long since forsaken; Now the Satyrs, changed to devils, Frighten mortals wine o'ertaken. Now to rivulets from the mountains Point the rods of fortune-tellers; Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,Not in flasks, and casks and cellars. Claudius, though he sang of flagons And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,