Once some ancient Scald,1
In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,
Chanted staves of these old ballads
Once in Elsinore,
At the court of old King Hamlet, Yorick and his boon companions Sang these ditties.
Once Prince Frederick's Guard Sang them in their smoky barracks; Suddenly the English cannon Joined the chorus !
Peasants in the field,
Sailors on the roaring ocean,
Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, All have sung them.
Thou hast been their friend;
They, alas! have left thee friendless!
Yet at least by one warm fireside Art thou welcome.
In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys,
So thy twittering song shall nestle In my bosom,—
Quiet, close, and warm,
Sheltered from all molestation,
And recalling by their voices
Youth and travel.
SWEET the memory is to me Of a land beyond the sea,
Where the waves and mountains meet, Where amid her mulberry-trees
Sits Amalfi in the heat,
Bathing ever her white feet In the tideless summer seas.
In the middle of the town, From its fountains in the hills, Tumbling through the narrow gorge, The Canneto rushes down,
Turns the great wheels of the mills, Lifts the hammers of the forge.
"T is a stairway, not a street, That ascends the deep ravine, Where the torrent leaps between Rocky walls that almost meet. Toiling up from stair to stair Peasant girls their burdens bear; Sunburnt daughters of the soil, Stately figures tall and straight, What inexorable fate
Dooms them to this life of toil?
Lord of vineyards and of lands, Far above the convent stands. On its terraced walk aloof
Leans a monk with folded hands. Placid, satisfied, serene,
Looking down upon the scene Over wall and red-tiled roof; Wondering unto what good end All this toil and traffic tend, And why all men cannot be Free from care and free from pain, And the sordid love of gain, And as indolent as he.
Where are now the freighted barks From the marts of east and west? Where the knights in iron sarks Journeying to the Holy Land, Glove of steel upon the hand, Cross of crimson on the breast?
Where the pomp of camp and court? Where the pilgrims with their prayers? Where the merchants with their wares, And their gallant brigantines Safely sailing into port Chased by corsair Algerines?
Vanished like a fleet of cloud, Like a passing trumpet-blast, Are those splendors of the past, And the commerce and the crowd! Fathoms deep beneath the seas Lie the ancient wharves and quays, Swallowed by the engulfing waves; Silent streets and vacant halls, Ruined roofs and towers and walls; Hidden from all mortal eyes
Deep the sunken city lies: Even cities have their graves!
This is an enchanted land!
Round the headlands far away Sweeps the blue Salernian bay With its sickle of white sand: Further still and furthermost On the dim discovered coast Pæstum with its ruins lies, And its roses all in bloom Seem to tinge the fatal skies Of that lonely land of doom.
On his terrace, high in air, Nothing doth the good monk care For such worldly themes as these. From the garden just below Little puffs of perfume blow, And a sound is in his ears Of the murmur of the bees In the shining chestnut-trees; Nothing else he heeds or hears. All the landscape seems to swoon In the happy afternoon; Slowly o'er his senses creep The encroaching waves of sleep, And he sinks as sank the town, Unresisting, fathoms down, Into caverns cool and deep!
Walled about with drifts of
Hearing the fierce north-wind blow, Seeing all the landscape white And the river cased in ice, Comes this memory of delight, Comes this vision unto me Of a long-lost Paradise In the land beyond the sea.
THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.
A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED'S OROSIUS.1
OTHERE,2 the old sea-captain, Who dwelt in Helgoland,
To King Alfred, the Lover of Truth, Brought a snow-white walrus-tooth, Which he held in his brown right hand.
His figure was tall and stately, Like a boy's his eye appeared;
His hair was yellow as hay, But threads of a silvery gray Gleamed in his tawny beard.
Hearty and hale was Othere,
His cheek had the color of oak; With a kind of a laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach,
As unto the King he spoke.
And Alfred, King of the Saxons, Had a book upon his knees, And wrote down the wondrous tale Of him who was first to sail Into the Arctic seas.
"So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;
1 Orosius was a Spanish priest who lived in the fifth century and wrote a universal history which was translated by King Alfred the Great of England.
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