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THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S-NEST.

ONCE the Emperor Charles of Spain
With his swarthy, grave commanders,
I forget in what campaign,
Long besieged, in mud and rain,

Some old frontier town of Flanders.

Up and down the dreary camp,

In great boots of Spanish leather,
Striding with a measured tramp,
These Hidalgos, dull and damp,
Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the
weather.

Thus as to and fro they went,

Over upland and through hollow,
Giving their impatience vent,
Perched upon the Emperor's tent,
In her nest, they spied a swallow.

Yes, it was a swallow's nest,

Built, of clay and hair of horses, Mane or tale, or dragoon's crest, Found on hedge-rows east and west, After skirmish of the forces.

Then an old Hidalgo said,

As he twirled his grey mustachio,
"Sure this swallow overhead
Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed,
And the Emperor but a Macho!"

Hearing his imperial name

Coupled with those words of malice, Half in anger, half in shame,

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IN THE CHURCHYARD

IN the village churchyard she lies,
Dust is in her beautiful eyes,

No more she breathes, nor feels, nor
stirs ;

At her feet and at her head
Lies a slave to attend the dead,
But their dust is white as hers.

Was she a lady of high degree,
So much in love with the vanity
And foolish pomp of this world of ours;
Or was it Christian charity,
And lowliness and humility,

The richest and rarest of all dowers?

AT CAMBRIDGE.

Who shall tell us? No one speaks;
No colour shoots into those cheeks,
Either of anger or of pride,
At the rude question we have asked ;
Nor will the mystery be unmasked

By those who are sleeping at her
side.

Hereafter?-And do you think to look
On the terrible pages of that Book

To find her failings, faults, and errors!
Ah, you will then have other cares,
In your own shortcomings and despairs,
In your own secret sins and terrors !

* Macho is Spanish for mule.
+ Golondrina. A swallow is also a cant word for a deserter.

THE TWO ANGELS.

Two angels, one of Life and one of Death,
Passed o'er our village as the morning broke;
The dawn was on their faces, and beneath,

The sombre houses hearsed with plumes of smoke. Their attitude and aspect were the same,

Alike their features and their robes of white;
But one was crowned with amaranth, as with flame,
And one with asphodels, like flakes of light.

I saw them pause on their celestial way;
Then said I, with deep fear and doubt oppressed,
"Beat not so loud, my heart, lest thou betray
The place where thy beloved are at rest!"
And he who wore the crown of asphodels,
Descending, at my door began to knock,
And my soul sank within me, as in wells
The waters sink before an earthquake's shock.

I recognized the nameless agony,

The terror and the tremor and the pain, That oft before had filled or haunted me,

And now returned with threefold strength again.

The door I opened to my heavenly guest,

And listened, for I thought I heard God's voice; And, knowing whatsoe'er He sent was best, Dared neither to lament nor to rejoice.

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Then with a smile, that filled the house with light, My errand is not Death, but Life," he said; And, ere I answered, passing out of sight,

On his celestial embassy he sped.

'Twas at thy door, O friend! and not at mine,
The angel with the amaranthine wreath,
Pausing, descended, and with voice divine,
Whispered a word that had a sound like Death.

Then fell upon the house a sudden gloom,

A shadow on those features, fair and thin;
And softly, from that hushed and darkened room,
Two angels issued, where but one went in.
All is of God! If He but wave His hand,
The mists collect, the rain falls thick and loud,
Till, with a smile of light on sea and land,

Lo! He looks back from the departing cloud.
Angels of Life and Death alike are His;
Without His leave they pass no threshold o'er;
Who, then, would wish or dare, believing this,
Against His messengers to shut the door?

IN the Valley of the Vire

OLIVER BASSELIN.

Still is seen an ancient mill, With its gables quaint and queer, And beneath the window-sill, On the stone,

These words alone: "Oliver Basselin lived here."

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Find an answer in each heart:
But the mirth

Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.
From the alehouse and the inn,

Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud, convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays
That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,

Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.
In the convent, clad in grey,

Sat the monks in lonely cells,
Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,
And the poet heard their bells;
But his rhymes

Found other chimes,
Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires,
Gone the abbot stern and cold,
And the brotherhood of friars ;
Not a name

Remains to fame,

From those mouldering days of old!

But the poet's memory here

Of the landscape makes a part;
Like the river, swift and clear,
Flows his song through many a heart;
Haunting still

That ancient mill,
In the Valley of the Vire.

THE JEWISH CEMETERY AT NEWPORT.

How strange it seems! These Hebrews in their graves,
Close by the street of this fair seaport town,

Silent beside the never-silent waves,

At rest in all this moving up and down.

The trees are white with dust, that o'er their sleep Wave their broad curtains in the south wind's breath, While underneath such leafy tents they keep

The long mysterious Exodus of Death.

And these sepulchral stones, so old and brown,
That pave with level flags their burial-place,
Seem like the tablets of the Law, thrown down
And broken by Moses at the mountain's base.

The very names recorded here are strange,

Of foreign accent, and of different climes; Alvares and Rivera interchange

With Abraham and Jacob of old times.

"Blessed be God! for he created Death!"

The mourner said, "and Death is rest and peace;" Then added, in the certainty of faith,

"And giveth Life that never more shall cease.'

Closed are the portals of their Synagogue,
No Psalms of David now the silence break,

No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue

In the grand dialect the Prophets spake.

Gone are the living, but the dead remain,
And not neglected; for a hand unseen,
Scattering its bounty, like a summer-rain,

Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green.

How came they here? What burst of Christian hate,
What persecution, merciless and blind,

Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate-
These Ishmaels and Hagars of mankind?

They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure,
Ghetto and Judenstrass, in mirk and mire;
Taught in the school of patience to endure
The life of anguish and the death of fire.

All their lives long, with the unleavened bread
And bitter herbs of exile and its fears,

The wasting famine of the heart they fed,

And slaked its thirst with Marah of their tear

Anathema maranatha! was the cry

That rang from town to town, from street to street;

At every gate the accursed Mordecai

Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet.

Pride and humiliation hand in hand

Walked with them through the world where'er they went; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent.

For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past
They saw reflected in the coming time.

And thus for ever with reverted look

The mystic volume of the world they read, Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, Till life became a Legend of the Dead.

But ah! what once has been shall be no more!
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again.

VICTOR GALBRAITH.

UNDER the walls of Monterey
At daybreak the bugles began to play,
Victor Galbraith!

In the mist of the morning damp and grey,
These were the words they seemed to say:
"Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!"

Forth he came, with a martial tread;
Firm was his step, erect his head;
Victor Galbraith,

He who so well the bugle played,
Could not mistake the words it said:
"Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,
He looked at the files of musketry,

Victor Galbraith!

And he said, with a steady voice and eye,
"Take good aim; I am ready to die!"

Thus challenges death

Victor Galbraith.

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