Songs. 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, Thou art stained with wine 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 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, Once in Elsinore, At the court of old King Hamlet, Once Prince Frederick's Guard 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! And, as swallows build In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys, Quiet, close, and warm, Sheltered from all molestation, 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, They renewed the War of Wartburg, Sang their lauds on every side ; 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, Foam the walls and woodland nests, When the minster bell rang noontide, Gathered the unwelcome guests. 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. * 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." THE THE day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight. I see the lights of the village DAY IS DONE. 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, 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; 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, Then read from the treasured volume And lend to the rhyme of the poet And the night shall be filled with music, From the far-off isles enchanted, With the golden fruit of Truth; In the tropic clime of Youth; From the strong Will and the Endeavour Wrestle with the tides of Fate; Floating waste and desolate ; Ever drifting, drifting, drifting Currents of the restless heart; 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; And possessing youth eternal. 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 flagons filled with Rhenish, From that fiery blood of dragons Never would his own replenish. Come, old friend, sit down and listen! THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. [L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux : "Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours JACQUES BRIDAINE] SOMEWHAT back from the village street Tall poplar trees their shadows throw, Halfway up the stairs it stands, By day its voice is low and light; Through days of sorrow and of mirth, Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood, And as if, like God, it all things saw, In that mansion used to be His great fires up the chimney roared; But, like the skeleton at the feast, There groups of merry children played, There youths and maidens dreaming strayed; O precious hours! O golden prime, From that chamber, clothed in white, All are scattered now and fied, Never here, for ever there, "For ever-never! E |