TEARS, idle tears! I know not what they mean: Tears, from the depth of some divine despair,

6

THE DAYS THAT ARE NO MORE.

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy autumn fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail
That brings our friends up from the under-world;
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge :
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah! sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes

The casement slowly grows a glimmering square :
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips that are for others- deep as love,
Deep as first love, and wild with all regret:
O Death in Life! the days that are no more.

ALFRED TENNYSON

But now the dream is wholly o'er,
I bathe mine eyes and see;

And wander through the world once more,
A youth so light and free.

THE Lords of Thule it did not please
That Willegis their bishop was;
For he was a wagoner's son.
And they drew, to do him scorn,

Wheels of chalk upon the wall;

He found them in chamber, found them in hall.

But the pious Willegis

Could not be moved to bitterness:

Seeing the wheels upon the wall,

He bade his servants a painter call;

And said" My friend, paint now for me,

On every wall, that I may see,

A wheel of white in a field of red;

Underneath, in letters plain to be read,

The Lords of Thule were full of shame:
They wiped away their words of blame;
For they saw that scorn and jeer
Cannot wound the wise man's ear.

And all the bishops that after him came
Quartered the wheel with their arms of fame.
Thus came to pious Willegis

Glory out of bitterness.

Anonymous Translation.

ANONYMOUS. (German.)

THE ERL-KING.

WHO rides so late through the grisly night?
'Tis a father and child, and he grasps him tight;
He wraps him close in his mantle's fold,

And shelters the boy from the piercing cold.

66

66

66

My son, why thus to my arm dost cling?'

Father, dost thou not see the Erlie-King?

-The King with his crown and his long black train!"

My son, 't is a streak of the misty rain.”

"Come hither, thou darling! come, go with me!
Fine games know I that I'll play with thee;
Flowers many and bright do my kingdoms hold,
My mother has many a robe of gold."