I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime
As the ransom of Italy. One boy remained
To be leant on and walked with, recalling the time
When the first grew immortal, while both of us strained
To the height he had gained.

And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong,
Writ now but in one hand: "I was not to faint,-
One loved me for two-would be with me ere long:
And Viva l'Italia!' he died for, our saint,

Who forbids our complaint !"

My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware
Of a presence that turned off the balls,-v
-was impressed
It was Guido himself, who knew what I could bear,
And how 'twas impossible, quite dispossessed,
To live on for the rest."

On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line
Swept smoothly the next news from Gaeta :-Shot.

Tell his mother. Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother,—not

"mine,"

No voice says

my mother" again to me. What! You think Guido forgot?

Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven,
They drop earth's affections, conceive not of woe?
I think not. Themselves were too lately forgiven
Through that love and sorrow which reconciled so
The above and below.

O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray,

How we common mothers stand desolate, mark,

Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say!

MOTHER AND POET.

Both boys dead? but that's out of nature.

61

We all

Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one.

'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall;

And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done,
If we have not a son?

Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then?

When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport
Of the fire-balls of death crashing souls out of men?
When the guns of Cavalli with final retort
Have cut the game short;

When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee,

When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red,

When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead),

What then? Do not mock me.

Ah, ring your bells low,
My country is there,

And burn your lights faintly!

Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow:
My Italy's THERE with my brave civic pair,
To disfranchise despair!

Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength,
And bite back the cry of their pain in self-scorn;
But the birth-pangs of nations will wring us at length
Into wail such as this-and we sit on forlorn

When the man-child is born.

Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east,
And one of them shot in the west by the sea!
Both both my boys! If in keeping the feast,
You want a great song for your Italy free,
Let none look at me!

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING.

IN

Nuremberg.

N the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow lands

Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands;

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,

Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng;

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors rough and bold,

Had their dwellings in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme,

That their great, imperial city stretched its hand to every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band

Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.
Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of art;
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the
common mart;

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,

By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy

dust,

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust:

NUREMBERG.

63

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture

rare,

Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the

painted air.

Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple reverent heart,

Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;

Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies, Dead he is not—but departed—for the Artist never dies:

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,

That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air.

Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,

Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains;

From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly

guild,

Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.

As the weaver plied the shuttle wove he too the mystic

rhyme,

And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime,

Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom

In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle

craft,

Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.

But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; Painted by some humble artist as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.

And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,

Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.

Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded

tapestry.

Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard,

But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler-bard.

Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay;

Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil,

The nobility of labor,-the long pedigree of toil.

HENRY W. LONGFELLOW.

A

Bingen on the Rhine.

SOLDIER of the legion lay dying in Algiers,

There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth

of woman's tears;

But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed

away,

And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say: