When the death-angel touches those swift keys! Through the closed blinds the golden sun What loud lament and dismal Miserere Poured in a dusty beam, Like the celestial ladder seen By Jacob in his dream. And ever and anon, the wind, Sweet-scented with the hay, Turned o'er the hymn-book's fluttering leaves That on the window lay. Long was the good man's sermon, Will mingle with their awful sympho nies ! I hear even now the infinite fierce cho.. rus, The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own. On helm and harness rings the Saxon hammer, the Through Cimbric forest roars Norseman's song, And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!" Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies! But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise. NUREMBERG. In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, Had their dwelling in thy castle, timedefying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. In the court-yard of the castle, bound On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust; In the church of sainted Lawrence stands | And at night the swart mechanic comes a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art ; Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair. Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. That he once has trod its pavement, that | The he once has breathed its air! Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains. From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, THE NORMAN BARON. Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, où l'intérêt et l'avarice parlent moins haut que la raison, dans les instants de chagrin domestique, de maladie, et de péril de mort, les nobles se repentirent dé posséder des serfs, comme d'une chose peu agré Building nests in Fame's great temple, able à Dieu, qui avait créé tous les hommes à sor as in spouts the swallows build. As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures ham mered to the anvil's chime; Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, lau reate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, image. THIERRY, Conquête de l'Angleterre. In his chamber, weak and dying, In this fight was Death the gainer, By his bed a monk was seated, From the missal on his knee; And, amid the tempest pealing, And a garland in the window, and his Sounds of bells came faintly stealing, face above the door Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. Bells, that from the neighboring kloster Rang for the Nativity. In the hall, the serf and vassal Held, that night, their Christmas wassail; Many a carol, old and saintly, Sang the minstrels and the waits ; And so loud these Saxon gleemen Till at length the lays they chanted Whispered at the baron's ear. Tears upon his eyelids glistened, Turned his weary head to hear. "Wassail for the kingly stranger That have not yet been wholly told, Have not been wholly sung nor said. For his thought, that never stops, Follows the water-drops Down to the graves of the dead, TO A CHILD. DEAR child! how radiant on thy mother's knee, With merry-making eyes and jocund smiles, Thou gazest at the painted tiles, With many a grotesque form and face. With what a look of proud command Thousands of years in Indian seas Far down in the deep-sunken wells In some obscure and sunless place, Down through chasms and gulfs pro- Through many a danger and escape, found, The tall ships passed the stormy cape ; For thee in foreign lands remote, Beneath a burning, tropic clime, The Indian peasant, chasing the wild |