And I thought how like these chimes
Are the poet's airy rhymes,
All his rhymes and roundelays,
His conceits, and songs, and ditties,
From the belfry of his brain,
Scattered downward, though in vain,
On the roofs and stones of cities!
For by night the drowsy ear
Under its curtains cannot hear,
And by day men go

their

ways, Hearing the music as they pass, But deeming it no more, alas! Than the hollow sound of brass. Yet perchance a sleepless wight, Lodging at some humble inn In the narrow lanes of life, When the dusk and hush of night Shut out the incessant din Of daylight and its toil and strife, May listen with a calm delight To the poet's melodies, Till he hears, or dreams he hears, Intermingled with the song, Thoughts that he has cherished long; Hears amid the chime and singing The bells of his own village ringing, And wakes, and finds his slumberous eyes Wet with most delicious tears. Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay In Bruges, at the Fleur-de-Blé, Listening with a wild delight To the chimes that, through the night, Rang their changes from the Belfry Of that quaint old Flemish city.

a

THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.

In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry

old and brown; Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it

watches o'er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty

tower I stood, And the world threw off the darkness, like the

weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with

streams and vapors gray, Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast

the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chim

neys, here and there, Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, van

ished, ghost-like, into air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morn

ing hour, But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient From their nests beneath the rafters sang the

swallows wild and high; And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more

distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the

olden times, With their strange, unearthly changes rang the

melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the

nuns sing in their choir; And the great bell tolled among them, like the

chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms

filled my brain; They who live in history only seemed to walk the

earthi again;

All the Foresters of Flanders,—mighty Baldwin

Bras de Fer, Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de

Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those

days of old;

Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden

argosies; Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal

pomp and ease.

I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on

the ground; I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk

and hound;

And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke

slept with the queen, And the armed guard around them, and the sword

unsheathed between.

I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and

Juliers bold, Marching homeward from the bloody battle of

the Spurs of Gold;

Saw the fight at Minnewater, saw the White

Hoods moving west, Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden

Dragon's nest.

And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land