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,
On his tomb the birds were feasted
By the children of the choir.
Day by day, o'er tower and turret,
In foul weather and in fair,
Day by day, in vaster numbers,
Flocked the poets of the air.
On the tree whose heavy branches
Overshadowed all the place,
On the pavement, on the tombstone,
On the poet's sculptured face,
On the cross-bars of each window,
On the lintel of each door,

They renewed the War of Wartburg,
Which the bard had fought before.
There they sang their merry carols,

Sang their lauds on every side;
And the name their voices uttered
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.

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 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, That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only 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;
And to-night I long for rest.
Read from some humbler poet,

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,
And nights devoid of ease,
Still heard in his soul the music
Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care,
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume
The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music, And the cares that infest the day, Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs, And as silently steal away.

I SHOT

For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak

I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

WHEN descends on the Atlantic

The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Land ward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,

Laden with sea-weed from the rocks:

From Bermuda's reefs; from edges
Of sunken ledges,

In some far-off, bright Azore;
From Bahama, and the dashing,
Silver-flashing

Surges of San Salvador;

From the far-off isles enchanted,
Heaven has planted

With the golden fruit of Truth;
From the flashing surf, whose vision
Gleams Elysian

In the tropic clime of Youth;

From the strong Will and the Endeavour
That for ever

Wrestle with the tides of Fate;
From the wreck of Hopes far-scattered,
Tempest-shattered,

Floating waste and desolate ;-
Ever drifting, drifting, drifting
On the shifting

Currents of the restless heart;
Till at length in books recorded,
They, like hoarded
Household words, no more depart.

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;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,

And possessing youth eternal.
Round about him, fair Bacchantes,
Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses,
Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's

Vineyards, sing delirious verses. Thus he won, through all the nations, Bloodless victories, and the farmer Bore, as trophies and oblations, Vines for banners, ploughs for armour. Judged by no o'er-zealous rigour,

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.
Even Redi, though he chaunted
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.
Then with water fill the pitcher

Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus' tables.

Come, old friend, sit down and listen!
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

"-

SOMEWHAT back from the village street
Stands the old-fashioned country-seat;
Across its antique portico

Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,
And from its station in the hall
An ancient timepiece says to all,
Forever-never!
Never-for ever!"

Halfway up the stairs it stands,
And points and beckons with its hands
From its case of massive oak,
Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!
With sorrowful voice to all who pass,-
"For ever never!
Never-for ever!"

By day its

But in the silent dead of night,

oice is low and light;

Distinct as

It echoes along the vacant hall, a passing footstep's fall, Along the ceiling, along the floor,

And

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,

But, like the skeleton at the feast,
That warning timepiece never ceased,-
"For ever never!
Never-for ever!"

There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming

strayed;

O precious hours! O golden prime,
An affluence of love and time!
Even as a miser counts his gold,
Those hours the ancient timepiece told,—
"For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"

From that chamber, clothed in white,
The bride came forth on her wedding night;
There, in that silent room below,
The dead lay in his shroud of snow;
And in the hush that followed the prayer,
Was heard the old clock on the stair,-
"For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"

All are scattered now and fied,
Some are married, some are dead;
And when I ask, with throbs of pain,
"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"

stood,

It calml

And as if, Iike God, it all things saw, y repeats those words of awe,Forever-never!

N

ever-for ever!"

In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great res up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;

The ancient timepiece makes reply,-
"For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"

Never here, for ever there,
Where all parting, pain and care,
And death and time shall disappear,—
For ever there, but never here!
The horologe of Eternity
Sayeth this incessantly,-

"For ever-never!
Never-for ever!"

E