There are marks of age,

There are thumb-marks on thy margin, Made by hands that clasped thee rudely At the alehouse.

Soiled and dull thou art;

Yellow are thy time-worn pages,

As the russet, rain-molested
Leaves of autumn.

Thou art stained with wine

Scattered from hilarious goblets,

As these leaves with the libations
Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,

When in dreamy youth I wandered
By the Baltic,

When I paused to hear

The old ballad of King Christian

Shouted from suburban taverns

In the twilight.

Thou recallest bards,

Who, in solitary chambers,

And with hearts by passion wasted,

Wrote thy pages.

Thou recallest homes

Where thy songs of love and friendship

Made the gloomy Northern winter
Bright as summer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,

Chanted staves of these old ballads

To the Vikings.

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.

And, as swallows build

In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys,
So thy twittering songs shall nestle
In my bosom,-

Quiet, close, and warm,

Sheltered from all molestation,

And recalling by their voices
Youth and travel.

WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID.

[WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID, or BIRD-MEADOw, was one of the principal Minnesingers of the thirteenth century. He triumphed over Heinrich von Ofterdingen in that poetic contest at Wartburg Castle, known in literary history as the War of Wartburg.]

VOGELWEID the Minnesinger,

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;

Saying, "From these wandering minstrels
Í 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,
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.

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 bell 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.
But around the vast cathedral,
By sweet echoes multiplied,
Still the birds repeat the legend,
And the name of Vogelweid.

DRINKING SONG.

INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER.

COME, old friend! sit down and listen!
From the pitcher, placed between us,
How the waters laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus;

Old Silenus, bloated, drunken,
Led by his inebriate Satyrs;
On his breast his head is sunken,
Vacantly he leers and chatters.
Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow;
Ivy crowns that brow supernal
As the forehead of Apollo,

And possessing youth eternal.
Round about him, fair Bacchantes,

Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses, Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards, sing delirious verses. Thus he won, through all the nations, Bloodless victories, and the farmer Bore, as trophies and oblations,

Vines for banners, ploughs for armour.

Judged by no o'erzealous rigour,

Much this mystic throng expresses:

Bacchus was the type of vigour,
And Silenus of excesses.

These are ancient ethnic revels,

Of a faith long since forsaken;

Now the Satyrs, changed to devils,
Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken.
Now to rivulets from the mountains
Point the rods of fortune-tellers;
Youth perpetual dwells in fountains,-
Not in flasks, and casks, and cellars.
Claudius, though he sang of flagons
And huge tankards filled with Rhenish,
From that fiery blood of dragons
Never would his own replenish.
Even Redi, though he chaunted
Bacchus in the Tuscan valleys,
Never drank the wine he vaunted
In his dithyrambic sallies.
Then with water fill the pitcher
Wreathed about with classic fables;
Ne'er Falernian threw a richer
Light upon Lucullus' tables.

Come, old friend, sit down and listen!
As it passes thus between us,
How its wavelets laugh and glisten
In the head of old Silenus!

THE ARROW AND THE SONG.
I SHOT an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For, so swiftly it flew, the sight
Could not follow it in its flight.

I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
For who has sight so keen and strong,
That it can follow the flight of song?
Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow, still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend.

THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS.

L'éternité est une pendule, dont le balancier dit et redit sans cesse ces deux mots seulement, dans le silence des tombeaux: "Toujours! jamais! Jamais! toujours!"-JACQUES BRIDAINE.

SOMEWHAT back from the village street

Stands the old-fashioned country-seat,

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar trees their shadows throw,

And from its station in the hall

An ancient timepiece says to all,—

"Forever-never!
Never-forever!"

Half-way up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands
From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,
Crosses himself, and sighs alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass,-
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

By day its voice is low and light;
But in the silent dead of night,
Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,
It echoes along the vacant hall,
Along the ceiling, along the floor,
And seems to say at each chamber door,
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,
Through days of death and days of birth,
Through every swift vicissitude

Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,
And as if, like God, it all things saw,
It calmly repeats those words of awe,—
"Forever-never!

Never-forever!"

In that mansion used to be
Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;
The stranger feasted at his board;
But, like the skeleton at the feast,—
That warning timepiece never ceased,—
"Forever-never!
Never-forever!"

There groups of merry children played,
There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;
O precious hours! O golden prime,
And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient timepiece told,

"Forever-never!
Never-forever!"

From that chamber, clothed in white,

The bride came forth on her wedding night;

There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow;

And in the hush that followed the prayer,

Was heard the old clock on the stair,

"Forever-never!
Never-forever!"