How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read,
Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages

Of the great poet who foreruns the ages,
Anticipating all that shall be said!

O happy Reader! having for thy text

The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught
The rarest essence of all human thought!

O happy Poet! by no critic vext!

How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice!

HYMN.

FOR MY PROTHER'S ORDINATION.

CHRIST to the young man said: "Yet one | And evermore beside him on his way

The unseen Christ shall move,
That he may lean upon his arm and say,

"Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?"

Beside him at the marriage feast shall be,
To make the scene more fair;
Beside him in the dark Gethsemane
Of pain and midnight prayer.

O holy trust! O endless sense of rest!
Like the beloved John

To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast,
And thus to journey on !

GASPAR BECERRA.

By his evening fire the artist
Pondered o'er his secret shame;
Baffled, weary, and disheartened,
Still he mused, and dreamed of fame.

Twas an image of the Virgin

That had tasked his utmost skili; But, alas! his fair ideal

Vanished and escaped him still.

From a distant Eastern island
Had the precious wood been brought;
Day and night the anxious master
At his toil untiring wrought;

Till, discouraged and desponding,
Sat he now in shadows deep,

And the day's humiliation
Found oblivion in sleep.

Then a voice cried, "Rise, O Master;
From the burning brand of oak
Shape the thought that stirs within thee!"
And the startled artist woke,-

Woke, and from the smoking embers
Seized and quenched the glowing wood;
And therefrom he carved an image,
And he saw that it was good.

O thou sculptor, painter, poet!

Take this lesson to thy heart:
That is best which lieth nearest ;
Shape from that thy work of art.

The Golden Legend.

THE old Legenda Aurea, or Golden Legend, was originally written in Latin, in the thirteenth century, by Jacobus de Voragine, a Dominican friar, who afterwards became Archbishop of Genoa, and died in 1292.

He called his book simply "Legends of the Saints." The epithet of Golden was given it by his admirers; for, as Wynkin de Worde says, "Like as passeth gold in value all other metals, so this legend exceedeth all other books." But Edward Leigh, in much distress of mind, calls it "a book written by a man of a leaden heart for the basenesse of the errours, that are without wit or reason, and of a brazen forehead, for his impudent boldnesse in reporting things so fabulous and incredible."

This work, the great text-book of the legendary lore of the Middle Ages, was translated into French in the fourteenth century by Jean de Vigney, and in the fifteenth into English by William Caxton. It has lately been made more accessible by a new French translation: La Légende Dorée, traduite du Latin, par M. G. B. Paris, 1850. There is a copy of the original, with the Gesta Longobadorum appended, in the Harvard College Library, Cambridge, printed at Strasburg, 1496. The title-page is wanting; and the volume begins with the Tabula Legendorum.

I have called this poem the Golden Legeud, because the story upon which it is founded seems to me to surpass all other legends in beauty and significance. It exhibits, amid the corruptions of the Middle Ages, the virtue of disinterestedness and self-sacrifice, and the power of Faith, Hope, and Charity, sufficient for all the exigencies of life and death. The story is told, and perhaps invented, by Hartmann von der Aue, a Minnesinger of the twelfth century. The original may be found in Mailath's Altdeutsche Gedichte, with a modern German version. There is another in Marbach's Volksbucher, No. 32.

PROLOGUE.

The Spire of Strasburg Cathedral. Night and storm. LUCIFER, with the Powers of the Air, trying to tear down the Cross.

The Bells.

Excito lentos!
Dissipo ventos!

Paco cruentos!

Lucifer. Baffled! baffled!
Inefficient,

Craven spirits! leave this labour
Unto Time, the great Destroyer!
Come away, ere night is gone!
Voices. Onward! onward!
With the night-wind,

Over field and farm and forest,
Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,
Blighting all we breathe upon!

[They sweep away. Organ and Gregorian Chant.]

Choir.

Nocte surgentes
Vigilemus omnes'

I.

The Castle of Vautsberg on the Rhine. A chamber in a tower. PRINCE HENRY, sitting alone, ill and restless. Midnight.

Prince Henry. I cannot sleep! my fervid brain,

Calls up

the vanished Past again,

And throws its misty splendours deep

Into the pallid realms of sleep!

A breath from that far-distant shore
Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o'er intervening seas
Sweet odours from the Hesperides!
A wind, that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And, touching the Eolian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings!
Come back! ye friendships long departed!
That like o'erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled, one by one,

To stony channels in the sun!

Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended,

Come back, with all that light attended,

Which seemed to darken and decay

When ye arose and went away!

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,.
The airy crowds of long-ago,

The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more.
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;

They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers!
I would not sleep! I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away!
Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place,
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate;
Ourselves we cannot re-create,
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony!

Rest! rest! Oh, give me rest and peace!
The thought of life that ne'er shall cease
Has something in it like despair,
A weight I am too weak to bear!
Sweeter to this afflicted breast
The thought of never-ending rest!
Sweeter the undisturbed and deep
Tranquillity of endless sleep!

[4 flash of lightning, out of which LUCIFER appears, in the garb of a travelling

Physician.]

Lucifer. All hail, Prince Henry!

Prince Henry (starting).

Who and what are you?
Lucifer.

Who is it speaks?

One who seeks

A moment's audience with the Prince.
Prince Henry. When came you in?
Lucifer.

A moment since.

I found your study door unlocked,
And thought you answered when I knocked.
Prince Henry. I did not hear you.
Lucifer.

You heard the thunder;

It was loud enough to waken the dead.

And it is not a matter of special wonder
That, when God is walking overhead,

You should not hear my feeble tread.

Prince Henry. What may your wish or purpose be?
Lucifer. Nothing or everything, as it pleases

Your Highness. You behold in me