Borne through the Northern sky. Blasts from Niffelheim

Lifted the sheeted mists

Around him as he passed.

And the voice for ever cried, "Balder the Beautiful

Is dead, is dead!"

And died away

Through the dreary night,

In accents of despair.

Balder the Beautiful,

God of the summer sun,
Fairest of all the Gods!

Light from his forehead beamed,
Runes were upon his tongue,
As on the warrior's sword.

All things in earth and air
Bound were by magic spell
Never to do him harm;
Even the plants and stones;
All save the mistletoe,

The sacred mistletoe!

Hæder, the blind old God,

Whose feet are shod with silence, Pierced through that gentle breast With his sharp spear, by fraud

Made of the mistletoe,

The accursed mistletoe!

They laid him in his ship,

With horse and harness,

As on a funeral pyre.

Odin placed

A ring upon his finger,

And whispered in his car.

THE SINGERS.

GOD sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men,
And bring them back to heaven again.

The first, a youth, with soul of fire,
Held in his hand a golden lyre;

Through groves he wandered, and by streams,
Playing the music of our dreams.

The second, with a bearded face,
Stood singing in the market-place,

And stirred with accents deep and loud
The hearts of all the listening crowd.

A gray, old man, the third and last,
Sang in cathedrals dim and vast,
While the majestic organ rolled
Contrition from its mouths of gold.

And those who heard the Singers three
Disputed which the best might be;
For still their music seemed to start
Discordant echoes in each heart.

But the great Master said, "I see
No best in kind, but in degree;

I gave a various gift to each,

To charm, to strengthen, and to teach.

"These are the three great chords of might,

And he whose ear is tuned aright

Will hear no discord in the three,

But the most perfect harmony."

TAKE them, O Death! and bear away Whatever thou canst call thine own! Thine image, stamped upon this clay, Doth give thee that, but that alone!

Take them, O Grave! and let them lie
Folded upon thy narrow shelves
As garments by the soul laid by,
And precious only to ourselves!

Take them, O great Eternity!

Our little life is but a gust,
That bends the branches of thy tree,
And trails its blossoms in the dust.

HYMN

FOR MY BROTHER'S ORDINATION.

CHRIST to the young man said:

If thou wouldst perfect be,

"Yet one thing more ;

Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor,
And come and follow me!"

Within this temple Christ again, unseen,
Those sacred words hath said,

And his invisible hands to-day have been
Laid on a young man's head.

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!