When the death-angel touches those swift keys!

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,
Yet it seemed not so to me;
For he spake of Ruth the beautiful,
And still I thought of thee.

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
Stands the mighty linden planted by
with many an iron band,
Queen Cunigunde's hand;

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;

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.

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

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,
Was the Norman baron lying;
Loud, without, the tempest thundered,
And the castle-turret shook.

In this fight was Death the gainer,
Spite of vassal and retainer,
And the lands his sires had plundered,
Written in the Doomsday Book.

By his bed a monk was seated,
Who in humble voice repeated
Many a prayer and pater-noster,

From the missal on his knee;

And, amid the tempest pealing,

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
Sang to slaves the songs of freemen,
That the storm was heard but faintly,
Knocking at the castle-gates.

Till at length the lays they chanted
Reached the chamber terror-haunted,
Where the monk, with accents holy,

Whispered at the baron's ear.

Tears upon his eyelids glistened,
As he paused awhile and listened,
And the dying baron slowly

Turned his weary head to hear.

"Wassail for the kingly stranger
Born and cradled in a manger!
King, like David, priest, like Aaron,
Christ is born to set us free!

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,
Whose figures grace,

With many a grotesque form and face.
The ancient chimney of thy nursery!
The lady with the gay macaw,
The dancing girl, the grave bashaw
With bearded lip and chin;
And, leaning idly o'er his gate,
Beneath the imperial fan of state,
The Chinese mandarin.

With what a look of proud command
Thou shakest in thy little hand
The coral rattle with its silver bells,
Making a merry tune!

Thousands of years in Indian seas
That coral grew, by slow degrees,
Until some deadly and wild monsoon
Dashed it on Coromandel's sand!
Those silver bells
Reposed of yore,
As shapeless ore,

Far down in the deep-sunken wells
Of darksome mines,

In some obscure and sunless place,
Beneath huge Chimborazo's base,
Or Potosí's o'erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,

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