Wilt thou so love me after death?

Elsie. Wilt thou as fond and faithful be?

God sent his messenger of faith,

And whispered in the maiden's heart,
"Rise up, and look from where thou art,
And scatter with unselfish hands
Thy freshness on the barren sands
And solitudes of Death."

O beauty of holiness,

Of self-forgetfulness, of lowliness!

may,

In storm and sunshine, night and day,
In health, in sickness, in decay,
Here and hereafter, I am thine!
Thou hast Fastrada's ring. Beneath
The calm, blue waters of thine eyes,
Deep in thy steadfast soul it lies,

And, undisturbed by this world's breath,
With magic lights its jewels shine;
This golden ring which thou hast worn
Upon thy finger since the morn,
Is but a symbol and a semblance,
An outward fashion, a remembrance,
Of what thou wearest within unseen,
O my Fastrada, O my queen!
Behold! the hill-tops all aglow
With purple and with amethyst;
While the whole valley deep below
Is filled, and seems to overflow,
With a fast-rising tide of mist.

The evening air grows damp and chill!
Eet us go in.

Elsie.

Ah, not so soon.

See yonder fire! It is the moon
Slowly rising o'er the eastern hill,

It glimmers on the forest tips,

And through the dewy foliage drips

In little rivulets of light,

And makes the heart in love with night.

Prince Henry. Oft on this terrace, when the

day

Was closing, have I stood and gazed,
And seen the landscape fade away,
And the white vapours rise and drown
Hamlet and vineyard, tower and town,
While far above the hill-tops blazed.
But then another hand than thine
Was gently held and clasped in mine;
Another head upon my breast
Was laid, as thine is now, at rest.
Why dost thou lift thy tender eyes
With so much sorrow and surprise?
A minstrel's, not a maiden's, hand,

Was that which in my own was pressed.
A manly form usurped thy place,
A beautiful but bearded face,
That now is in the Holy Land,
Yet in my memory from afar
Is shining on us like a star.
But linger not. For while I speak,
A sheeted spectre white and tall,
The cold mist climbs the castle wall,
And lays his hand upon thy cheek!

(They go in.)

THE TWO RECORDING ANGELS ASCENDING.
The Angel of Good Deeds, with closed book.

God sent his messenger the rain,
And said unto the mountain brook,
"Rise up, and from thy caverns look,
And leap, with naked, snow-white feet,
From the cool hills into the heat
Of the broad, arid plain."

Whose very gentleness and weakness
Are like the yielding, but irresistible air!
Upon the pages

Of the sealed volume that I bear,
The deed divine

Is written in characters of gold,
That never shall grow old,
But through all ages
Burn and shine,

With soft effulgence!

O God! it is thy indulgence

That fills the world with the bliss

Of a good deed like this!

The Angel of Evil Deeds, with open book. Not yet, not yet

Is the red sun wholly set,
But evermore recedes,
While open still I bear
The Book of Evil Deeds,

To let the breathings of the upper air
Visit its pages and erase

The records from its face!
Fainter and fainter as I gaze
In the broad blaze

The glimmering landscape shines,
And below me the black river

Is hidden by wreaths of vapour!
Fainter and fainter the black lines
Begin to quiver

Along the whitening surface of the paper;
Shade after shade

The terrible words grow faint and fade,
And in their place
Runs a white space!
Down goes the sun!
But the soul of one,
Who by repentance

Has escaped the dreadful sentence,
Shines bright below me as I look,
It is the end!

With closed Book

To God do I ascend.

Lo! over the mountain steeps

A dark, gigantic shadow sweeps
Beneath thy feet;

A blackness inwardly brightening
With sullen heat,

As a storm-cloud lurid with lightning,

And a cry of lamentation,

Repeated and again repeated,
Deep and loud

As the reverberation

Of cloud answering unto cloud,

Swells and rolls away in the distance, As if the sheeted

Lightning retreated,

Baffled and thwarted by the wind's resistance.

It is Lucifer,

The son of mystery;

And since God suffers him to be,

He, too, is God's minister,

And labours for some good

By us not understood!

PRELUDE.

THE WAYSIDE INN.

ONE Autumn night, in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the way-side inn

Gleamed red with fire-light through the leaves
Of woodbine, hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin

As ancient is this hostelry
As any in the land may be,
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality;
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather-strains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creeking and uneven floors,

And chimney, huge, and tiled and tall.

A region of repose it seems

A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!
For there no noisy railway speeds

Its torch-race scattering smoke and gleeds;
But noon and night, the panting teams
Stop under the great oaks, that throw
Tangles of light and shape below,
On roofs and doors, and window-sills.
Across the road the barns display
Their lines of stalls, their mows of hay,
Through the wide doors the breezes blow,
The wattled cocks strut to and fro,
And half effaced by rain and shine,
The Red Horse prances on the sign.
Round this old-fashioned, quaint abode
Deep silence reigned, save when a gust
Went rushing down the country road,.
And skeletons of leaves, and dust,
A moment quickened by its breath,
Shuddered and danced their dance of death,
And through the ancient oaks o'erhead
Mysterious voices moaned and fled.
But from the parlour of the inn
A pleasant rumour smote the ear,
Like water rushing through a weir;
Oft interrupted by the din

Of laughter and of loud applause,
And in each intervening pauso
The music of a violin.

The fire-light shedding over all
The splendour of its ruddy glow,
Filled the low parlour large and low;
It gleamed on wainscot and on wall,

It touched with more than wonted grace,
Fair Princess Mary's pictured face;
It bronzed the rafters overhead,
On the old spinet's ivory keys
It played inaudible melodies,

It crowned the sombre clock with Flame,
The hands, the hours, the maker's name,

And painted with a livelier red
The Landlord's coat-of-arms again;
And, flashing on the window-pane,
Emblazoned with the light and shade
The jovial-rhymes that still remain,
Writ near a century ago,

By the great Major Molineaux,
Whom Hawthorne has immortal made.

Before the blazing fire of wood
Erect the rapt musician stood;
And ever and anon he bent
His head upon his instrument,
And seemed to listen, till he caught
Confessions of its secret thought-
The joy, the triumph, the lament,
The exultation and the pain;
Then, by the magic of his art,
He soothed the throbbings of his heart,
And lulled it into peace again.

Around the fireside at their ease
There sat a group of friends entranced
With the delicious melodies:
Who from the far-off noisy town
Had to the way-side inn come down,
To rest beneath its old oak-trees;
The fire-light on their faces glanced,
Their shadows on the wainscot danced,
And, though of different land and speech,
Each had his tale to tell, and each
Was anxious to be pleased and please.
And white the sweet musician plays,
Let me in outline sketch them all,
Perchance uncouthly as the blaze
With its uncertain touch pourtrays
Their shadowy semblance on the wall.
But first the Landlord will I trace:
Grave in his aspect and attire;
A man of ancient pedigree,

A justice of the peace was he,

Known in all Sudbury as "The Squire."
Proud was he of his name and race,

Of old Sir William and Sir Hugh,

And in the parlour, full in view,

His coat-of-arms well framed and glazed,
Upon the walls in colours blazed;

He beareth gules upon his shield,

A chevron argent in the field,

With three wolves' heads, and for the crest

A Wyvern part-per-pale, addressed

Upon a helmet barred; below

The scroll reads, By the name of Howe."

And over this no longer bright

Though glimmering with a latent light.
Was hung the sword his grandsire bore,
In the rebellious day of yore,
Down there at Concord in the fight.

A youth was there of quiet ways,

A Student of old books and days,

To whom all tongues and lands were known, And yet a lover of his own;

With many a social virtue graced,

And yet a friend of solitude;
A man of such a genial mood

The heart of all things he embraced,
And yet of such fastidious taste,
He never found the best too good.
Books were his passion and delight,
And in his upper room at home

Stood many a rare and sumptuous tome
In vellum bound, with gold bedight,
Great volumes garmented in white,
Recalling Florence, Pisa, Rome.

He loved the twilight that surrounds
The border-land of old romance,

Where glittered hauberk, helm, and lance,
And banner waves, and trumpet sounds,
And ladies ride with hawk on wrist,
And mighty warriors sweep along,
Magnifled by the purple mist,

The dusk of centuries and of song,
The chronicles of Charlemagne,
Of Merlin and of Mort d'Arthure,
Magnified together in his brain
With tales of Flores and Blanchefleur,
Sir Ferumbras, Sir Eglamour,
Sir Launcelot, Sir Morgadour,
Sir Guy, Sir Bevis, Sir Gawain,
A young Sicilian, too, was there;
In sight of Etna born and bred,
Some breath of his volcanic air
Was glowing in his heart and brain,
And, being rebeljious to his liege,
After Palermo's fatal siege,

In good King Bomba's happy reign.
His face was like a summer's night.

All flooded with a dusky light;

His hands were small; his teeth shone white

As sea-shells when he smiled or spoke;

His sinews supple and strong as oak;
Clean shaven was he as a priest,
Who at the mass on Sunday sings
Save that upon his upper lip

His beard, a good palm's length at least
Level and pointed at the tip,

Shot sideways, like a swallow's wings.
The poets read he o'er and o'er,
And most of all the Immortal Four
Of Italy; and next to those,
The story-telling bard of prose,
Who wrote the joyous Tuscan tales
Of the Decameron, that makes
Fiesole's green hills and vates
Remembered for Boccaccio's sake.
Much too of music was his thonght;
The melodies and measures fraught
With sunshine and the open air,
Of vineyards and the singing sea
Of his beloved Sicily:

And much it pleased him to peruse
The songs of the Sicilian muse,—
Bucolic songs of Meli sung,

In the familiar peasant tongue,

That made men say, "Behold! once more
The pitying gods to earth restore
Theocritus of Syracuse!"

A Spanish Jew from Alicant

With aspect grand and grave was there;
Vender of silks and fabrics rare,
And attar of rose from the Sevant.
Like an old Patriarch he appeared,
Abraham or Isaac, or at least
Some later Prophet or High-Priest;
With lustrous eyes and olive-skin,
And, wildly tossed from cheeks and chin,
The tumbling cataract of his beard.
His garments breathed a spicy scent,
Of cinnamon and sandal blent,

Like the soft aromatic gales
That meet the mariner, who sails
Through the Moluccas, and the seas
That wash the shores of Celebes...
All stories that récorded are

By Pierre Alphonse he knew by heart,

And it was rumoured he could say
The parables of Sandabar,
And all the fables of Pilpay,
Or, if not all the greater part.

Well versed was he in Hebrew books,
Talmud and Targum, and the lore
Of Kabala; and evermore
There was a mystery in his looks;
His eyes seemed gazing far away,
As if in vision or in trance

He heard the solemn sackbut play,
And saw the Jewish maidens dance.

A Theologian from the school

Of Cambridge on the Charles, was there;
Skilful alike with tongue and pen,
He preached to all men everywhere
The Gospel of the Golden Rule,
The New Commandment given to men,
Thinking the deed and not the creed,
Would help us in our utmost need.
With reverent teet the earth he trod,
Nor banished nature from his plan,
But studied still with deep research
To build the Universal Church,
Lofty as is the love of God,
And ample as the wants of man.

A Poet, too, was there, whose verse
Was tender, musical, and terse;
The inspiration, the delight,

The gleam, the glory, the swift fight,
The thought so sudden that they seem
The revelations of a dream.

All these were his; but with them came

No envy of another's fame;

He did not find his sleep less sweet
For music in some neighbouring street,
Nor rustling hear in every breeze
The laurels of Miltiades.

Honour and blessings on his head
While living, good report when dead,
Who, not too eager for renown,
Accepts but does not clutch the crown!

Last the Musician as he stood
Illumined by the blaze of wood;
Fair-haired, blue-eyed, his aspect blithe,
His figure tall and straight and litlic,
And every feature of his face
Kevealing his Norwegian race;
A radiance, streaming from within,
Around his eyes and forehead beained,
The Angel with the violin,
Painted by Raphael, he seemed.
He lived in that ideal world
Whose language is no speech, but song;
Around him evermore the throng

Of elves and sprites their dances whirled;
The Strömkarl sang, the cataract hurled
Its headlong waters from the height;
And mingled in the wild delight
The scream of sea-birds in their flight,
The rumour of the forest trees,
The plunge of the implacable seas,
The tumult of the wind at night,
Voices of eld, like trumpets blowing,
Old ballads and wild mélodics
Through mist and darkness pouring forth
Like Elivagar's river flowing

Out of the glaciers of the North.

The instrument on which he played
Was in Cremona's workshops made,
By a great master of the past,
Ere yet was lost the art divine;
Fashioned of maple and of pine,
That in Tyrolean forests vast

Had rocked and wrestled with the blast,
Exquisite was it in its design,
A marvel of the lutist's art,
Perfect in each minutest part:
And in its hollow chamber, thus

The maker from whose hands it camestna
Had written his unrivalled name,tobe'd yo
"Antonius Stradivarius." and salv ogad 10
And when he played, the atmosphere in woll
12 emotilob li gulf
Was filled with magic, and the ear 19v sl
Caught echoes of that Harp of Gold, buz
Whose music had so weird a sound, the sit
The hunted stag forgot to bound,
and o
The leaping rivulet backward rolled,osenweltt
The birds came down from bush and tree,
The dead came from beneath the sea, low elli
The maiden to the harper's knee
Jugge

The music ceased the applause was loud,
The pleased musician smiled and bowed;s 197
The wood-fire clapped its hands of flame, ht
The shadows on the wainscot stirred,
And from the harpsichord there came off of
A ghostly murmur of acclaim, Hame aida ol
A sound like that sent down at night luo eill
By birds of passage in their flight, ei onnig of
From the remotest distance heard.net zino all
Then silence followed; then beganial Rosa ell
A clamour for the Landlord's tale,illiw.seod W
The story promised them of old, osad on
They said, but always left untoldge on won bal
And he, although a bashful man,
Jad
And all his courage seemed to fail, to nolungme)
Finding excuse of no avail, anot it to muzozil
Yielded; and thus the story rand old

69wolnovo ono il did wel

Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore, of hu ban galime Just as the moon rose over the bay, Where swinging wide at her moorings lay The Somerset, British man-of-war A phantom ship, with each mast and spar Across the moon like a prison bar, o And a huge black hulk, that was magnified By its own reflection in the tide. Do smo 10 Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street, Wanders and watches with eager ears, head Till in the silence around him he hears) no The muster of men at the barrack door, of The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet, to And the measured tread of the grenadiers, Marching down to their boats on the shore. Then he climbed to the tower of the church, no gange off of Up the wooden stairs with stealthy tread, b bit To the belfry-chamber overhead, And startled the pigeons from their perche wobile bn On the sombre rafters, that round him made bn Massas and moving shapes of shades, bn Up the trembling ladders, steep and tall, o ba To the highest window in the wall,

od Where he paused to listen and look down loot sh A moment on the roofs of the town, mid blot be And the moonlight flowing over allt af FT

181

A

Beneath, in the church-yard, lay the dead, In their night-encampment on the hill, Wrapped in silence so deep and still du That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread, bir A The watchful night-wind as it went 3975 GT Creeping along from tent to tent, And seeming to whisper, All is well!osio 1. A moment only he feels the spell brow Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread Of the fonely belfry and the dead; I guoTHT For suddenly all his thoughts are benter of On a shadowy something far away along if Where the river widens to meet the bay, T A line of black that bends and floats of bit On the rising tide like a bridge of boats. Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride, Booted and spurred with a heavy stride On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere. Now he patted his horse's side, Now gazed at the landscape far and near, Then, impetuous, stamped the earth, And turned and tightened his saddle-girth; But mostly he watched with eager search The belfry-tower of the Old North Church, As it rose above the graves on the hill. Lonely and spectral and sombre and still. And lo! as he looks on the belfry's height A glimmer, and then a gleam of light! TO He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns, A second lamp in the belfry burns! But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight,

Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And on through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,
A cry of deflance and not of fear,

A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,

In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

INTERLUDE.

THE Landlord ended thus his tale,
Then rising took down from its nail
The sword that hung there dim with dust,
And cleaving to its sheath with rust,
And said, "This sword was in the fight."
The Poet seized it, and exclaimed,
"It is the sword of a good knight
Though homespun was his coat-of-mail;
What matter if it be not named
Joyeuse, Colada, Durindale,
Excalibar, or Aroundight,

Or other name the books record?
Your ancestor, who bore this sword
As Colonel of the Volunteers,
Mounted upon his old gray mare,
Seen here and there and everywhere,
To me a grander shape appears
Than old Sir William, or what not,
Clinking about in foreign lands
With iron gauntlets on his hands,
And on his head an iron pot!"

All laughed; the Landlord's face grew red
As his escutcheon on the wall:
He could not comprehend at all
The drift of what the Poet said;
For those who had been longest dead
Were always greatest in his eyes
And he was speechless with suprise
To see Sir William's plumed head
Brought to a level with the rest,
And made the subject of a jest.

And this perceiving, to appease

The Landlord's wrath, the other's fears,
The Student said with careless ease,
"The ladies and the cavaliers,
The arms, the loves, the courtesies,
The deed of high emprise, I sing!
Thus Ariosto says, in words

That have the stately stride and ring
Of armed knights and clashing swords.
Now listen to the tale I bring:
Listen! though not to me belong
The flowing draperies of his song,

The words that rouse the voice that charms.
The Landlord's tale was one of arms,

Only a tale of love is mine,

Blending the human with the divine,
A tale of the Decameron, told
In Palmeri's garden old,

By Fiamette, laurel-crowned,
While her companions lay around,
And heard the intermingled sound
Of air that on thy errands sped,
And wild birds gossiping overhead,
And list of leaves, and fountain's fall,
And her own voice more sweet than all
Telling the tale which wanting these,
Perchance may lose its power to please."

THE STUDENT'S TALE.

THE FALCON OF SER FEDERIGO.

ONE summer morning, when the sun was hot, Weary with labour in his garden plot,

On a rude bench beneath his cottage eaves,
Ser Federigo sat among the leaves
Of a huge vine, that with its arms outspread,
Hung its delicious clusters overhead.
Below him, through the lovely valley, flowed
The river Arno, like a winding road,

And from its banks were lifted high in air
The spires and roofs of Florence called the Fair;
To him a marble tomb, that rose above
His wasted fortunes and his buried love.
For there in banquet and in tournament,
His wealth had lavished been, his, substance
spent,

1

To woo and lose, since ill his wooing sped,
Monna Giovanna, who his rival wed,
Yet ever in his fancy reigned supreme,ret
The ideal woman of a young man's dream.
Then he withdrew, in poverty and pain,
To this small farm, the last of his domain,
His only comfort and his only care

To prune his vines, and plant the fig and pear;
His only forester and only guest

His falcon faithful to him when the rest,
Whose willing hand had found so light of yore
The brazen knocker of his palace door,
Had now no strength to lift the wooden latch,
That entrance gave beneath a roof of thatch.
Companion of his solitary ways,

Purveyor of his feasts on holidays,

On him this melancholy man bestowed
The love with which his nature overflowed.

And so the empty-handed years went round,
Vacant, though voiceful with prophetic sound,
And so, that summer morn, he sat and mused
With folded patient hands, as he was used,
And dreamily before his half-closed sight
Floated the vision of his lost delight.
Beside him, motionless, the drowsy bird
Dreamed of the chase, and in his slumber heard
The sudden, scythe-like sweep of wings, that

dare

The headlong plunge thro' eddying gulfs of air,
Then, starting broad awake upon his perch,
Tinkled his bells, like mass-bells in a church,
And, looking at his master seemed to say,
Ser Federigo, shall we hunt to-day?"

Ser Federigo thought not of the chase!
The tender vision of her lovely face,
I will not say he seems to see, he sees
In the leaf-showers of trellises,
Herself, yet not herself; a lovely child
With flowing tresses, and eyes wide and wild,
Coming undaunted up the garden walk,
And looking not at him but at the hawk.
"Beautiful falcon!" said he, "would that I
Might hold thec on my wrist, or see thee fly!"
The voice was hers, and made strange echoes
start,

Through all the haunted chamber of his heart,
As an æolian harp through gusty doors
Of some old ruin its wild music pours.

"Who is thy mother, my fair boy?" he said,
His hand laid softly on that shining head.
"Monna Giovanna.-Will you let me stay.
A little while, and with your falcon play?
We live there, just beyond your garden wal,
In the great house behind the poplars tall.”

So he spake on; and Federgo heard
As from afar each softly uttered word,
And drifted onward through the golden gleams
And shadows of the misty sea of dreams,
As mariners becalmed through vapours drift,
And feel the sea beneath them sink and lift,
And hear far off the mournful breakers roar
And voices calling faintly from the shore!
Then, waking from his pleasant reveries,
He took the little boy upon his knees.
And told him stories of this gallant bird.
Till in their friendship he became a third.