He giveth you your plumes of down,
Your crimson hoods, your cloaks of brown.

"He giveth you your wings to fly
And breathe a purer air on high,
And careth for you everywhere,
Who for yourselves so little care!

With flutter of swift wings and songs
Together rose the feathered throngs,
And singing scattered far apart;
Deep peace was in St. Francis' heart.

He knew not if the brotherhood
His homily had understood;
He only knew that to one ear

The meaning of his words was clear.

WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.

VOGELWEID the Minnesinger,1

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;

1 The Minnesingers were German lyrical poets, who first sang about the middle of the twelfth century; their songs breathed of love and sweetness in woods, meadows, flowers, grass, rivers, birds, and women, while some had a religious character. Walter's name is pronounced Fōgelvid.

WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.

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,1
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.

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1 Castle Wartburg was the residence of Landgrave Herrmann of Thüringen, in Vogelweid's time, and a great resort of the Minnesingers. The Wartburg Minstrels' War is the name of a poem which celebrates the singing contests of that day. Long afterward Wartburg became famous as the place where Luther translated the Bible into German.

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,
From the walls and woodland nests,
When the minster bells 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.

SOUTHWARD with fleet of ice

Sailed the corsair Death;

Wild and fast blew the blast,

And the east-wind was his breath.

His lordly ships of ice

Glisten in the sun;

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT.

On each side, like pennons wide,
Flashing crystal streamlets run.

His sails of white sea-mist
Dripped with silver rain;

But where he passed there were cast
Leaden shadows o'er the main.

Eastward from Campobello

Sir Humphrey Gilbert1 sailed;
Three days or more seaward he bore,
Then, alas! the land-wind failed.

Alas! the land-wind failed,

And ice-cold grew the night;
And nevermore, on sea or shore,
Should Sir Humphrey see the light.

He sat upon the deck,

The Book was in his hand;
"Do not fear! Heaven is as near,"
He said, "by water as by land!"

In the first watch of the night,
Without a signal's sound,

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1 Sir Humphrey Gilbert was half-brother to Sir Walter Raleigh, and came to America as leader of an expedition in 1583. It was when he was returning to England, after an unsuccessful voyage in search of a silver mine, that he met his death as the poem tells. He was aboard the Squirrel, the smallest vessel of his little fleet, -a boat of only ten tons burden. The historian of the expedition tells how the captain of one of the other vessels came near enough to see Sir Humphrey sitting in the stern with his book, and to hear his cheerful words.

Out of the sea mysteriously,

The fleet of Death rose all around.

The moon and the evening star
Were hanging in the shrouds;
Every mast, as it passed,

Seemed to rake the passing clouds.

They grappled with their prize,
At midnight black and cold!
As of a rock was the shock;
Heavily the ground-swell rolled.

Southward through day and dark,
They drift in close embrace,

With mist and rain, o'er the open main;
Yet there seems no change of place.

Southward, forever southward,

They drift through dark and day;
And like a dream, in the Gulf-Stream 1
Sinking, vanish all away.

VICTOR GALBRAITH.2

UNDER the walls of Monterey

At daybreak the bugles begin to play,

1 The warm river in the midst of the ocean, with its banks of cold water, which we call the Gulf Stream, has an important influence upon the climate of the countries by which it flows. The icebergs, as they drift into it from the north, melt away like a dream.

2 "This poem," says Mr. Longfellow, "is founded on fact. Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a company of volunteer cavalry,