For in the background figures vague and vast
Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime,
And all the great traditions of the Past

They saw reflected in the coming time.
And thus for ever with reverted look

The mystic volume of the world they read,
Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book,
Till life became a Legend of the Dead.
But ah! what once has been shall be no more.
The groaning earth in travail and in pain
Brings forth its races, but does not restore,
And the dead nations never rise again.

OLIVER BASSELIN.

[Oliver Basselin, the “Père joyeux du Vaudeville," flourished in the fifteenth century, and gave to his convivial songs the name of his native valleys, in which he sang them, Vaux-de-Vire. This name was afterwards corrupted into the modern Vaudeville.]

IN the Valley of the Vire

Still is seen an ancient mill,
With its gables quaint and queer,
And beneath the window-sill,
On the stone,

These words alone:

"Oliver Basselin lived here."

Far above it, on the steep,

Ruined stands the old Château;
Nothing but the donjon-keep

Left for shelter or for show.
Its vacant eyes

Stare at the skies,

Stare at the valley green and deep.

Once a convent, old and brown,
Looked, but ah! it looks no more,
From the neighbouring hillside down
On the rushing and the roar
Of the stream

Whose sunny gleam

Cheers the little Norman town.
In that darksome mill of stone,
To the water's dash and din,
Careless, humble, and unknown,
Sang the poet Basselin
Songs that fill

That ancient mill

With a splendour of its own.

Never feeling of unrest

Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed;

Only made to be his nest,

All the lovely valley seemed;
No desire

Of soaring higher

Stirred or fluttered in his breast.

True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which, as winds do in the pine,
Find an answer in each heart:
But the mirth

Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.
From the alehouse and the inn,
Opening on the narrow street
Came the loud convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays

That in those days

Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,

Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.
In the convent, clad in gray,
Sat the monks in lonely cells,
Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,
And the poet heard their bells;
But his rhymes

Found other chimes,

Nearer to the earth than they.

Gone are all the barons bold,

Gone are all the knights and squires,

Gone the abbot stern and cold,

And the brotherhood of friars;

Not a name

Remains to fame,

From those mouldering days of old!

But the poet's memory here

Of the landscape makes a part;

Like the river, swift and clear,

Flows his song through many a heart;
Haunting still

That ancient mill,

In the Valley of the Vire.

THE DISCOVERER OF THE NORTH CAPE.

A LEAF FROM KING ALFRED's orosius.

OTHERE, 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 colour of oak;
With a kind of 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;

To the east are wild mountain-chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.

"So far I live to the northward,

From the harbour of Skeringes-hale,

If you only sailed by day,

With a fair wind all the way,

More than a month would you sail.

"I own six hundred reindeer,
With sheep and swine beside;
I have tribute from the Finns,
Whalebone and reindeer-skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.

"I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then,

With their sagas of the seas:

"Of Iceland and of Greenland,
And the stormy Hebrides,
And the undiscovered deep;-
I could not eat nor sleep

For thinking of those seas.

"To the northward stretched the desert,
How far I fain would know;
So at last I sallied forth,
And three days sailed due north,
As far as the whale-ships go.

"To the west of me was the ocean,
To the right the desolate shore,
But I did not slacken sail
For the walrus or the whale,

Till after three days more.

"The days grew longer and longer,
Till they became as one,

And southward through the haze
I saw the sullen blaze

Of the red midnight sun.

"And then uprose before me,
Upon the water's edge,
The huge and haggard shape
Of that unknown North Cape,
Whose form is like a wedge.
"The sea was rough and stormy,
The tempest howled and wailed,
And the sea-fog, like a ghost,
Haunted that dreary coast,

But onward still I sailed.

"Four days I steered to eastward,

Four days without a night:
Round in a fiery ring

Went the great sun, O King
With red and lurid light.'

Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Ceased writing for a while;
And raised his eyes from his book,
With a strange and puzzled look,
And an incredulous smile.

But Othere, the old sea-captain,

He neither paused nor stirred, Till the King listened, and then Once more took up his pen,

And wrote down every word. "And now the land," said Othere, "Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore, And ever southward bore

Into a nameless sea.

"And there we hunted the walrus,

The narwhale, and the seal;

Ha! 'twas a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame
Flew our harpoons of steel.
"There were six of us altogether,
Norsemen of Helgoland;

In two days and no more
We killed of them threescore,

And dragged them to the strand!"
Here Alfred, the Truth-Teller,
Suddenly closed his book,
And lifted his blue eyes,
With doubt and strange surmise
Depicted in their look.

And Othere, the old sea-captain,
Stared at him wild and weird,
Then smiled, till his shining teeth
Gleamed white from underneath
His tawny, quivering beard.
And to the King of the Saxons,

In witness of the truth,

Raising his noble head,

He stretched his brown hand, and said,
"Behold this walrus-tooth!"

VICTOR GALBRAITH.

[This poem is founded on fact. Victor Galbraith was a bugler in a company of volunteer cavalry, and was shot in Mexico for some breach of discipline. It is a common superstition among soldiers that no balls will kill them unless their names are written on them. The old proverb says, "Every bullet has its billet."]

UNDER the walls of Monterey

At daybreak the bugles began to play,
Victor Galbraith!

In the mist of the morning damp and gray,
These were the words they seemed to say,
"Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!"

Forth he came, with a martial tread:
Firm was his step, erect his head;
Victor Galbraith,

He who so well the bugle played,
Could not mistake the words it said:

"Come forth to thy death,

Victor Galbraith!"

He looked at the earth, he looked at the sky,
He looked at the files of musketry,

Victor Galbraith!

And he said, with a steady voice and eye,
"Take good aim; I am ready to die!"

Thus challenges death

Victor Galbraith.