I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the ground; .

I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound;

And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept with the queen,

And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed between

I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers bold,

Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold;7

Saw the fight at Minnewater,8 saw the White Hoods moving west,

Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragons nest,9

And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote;

And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat;

Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand,

"I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!"

Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar

Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.

Hours had passed away like minutes: and, before I was aware,

Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sunillumined square.

A GLEAM OF SUNSHINE.

THIS is the place. Stand still, my steed,
Let me review the scene,
And summon from the shadowy Past
The forms that once have been.

The Past and Present here unite
Beneath Time's flowing tide,
Like footprints hidden by a brook,
But seen on either side.

Here runs the highway to the town;

There the green lane descends,

Through which I walked to church with thee,
O gentlest of my friends!

The shadow of the linden-trees
Lay moving on the grass;

Between them and the moving boughs,
A shadow, thou didst pass.

Thy dress was like the lilies,

And thy heart as pure as they;
One of God's holy messengers
Did walk with me that day,

I saw the branches of the trees
Bend down thy touch to meet,
The clover-blossoms in the grass
Rise up to kiss thy feet.

"Sleep, sleep to-day, tormenting cares,
Of earth and folly born!"
Solemnly sang the village choir

On that sweet Sabbath morn.

Through the closed blinds the golden sun
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.

Long was the prayer he uttered,
Yet it seemed not so to me;

For in my heart I prayed with him,
And still I thought of thee.

But now, alas! the place seems changed;
Thou art no longer here.

Part of the sunshine of the scene

With thee did disappear.

Though thoughts, deep-rooted in my heart,
Like pine-trees dark and high,

Subdue the light of noon, and breathe
A low and ceaseless sigh;

This memory brightens o'er the past,
As when the sun, concealed

Behind some cloud that near us hangs
Shines on a distant field.

THE ARSENAL AT SPRINGFIELD THIS is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,

Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms. Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,

When the death-angel touches those swift keys!

What loud lament and dismal Miserere

Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
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, Through Cimbric forest roars the Norseman's

song,

And loud, amid the universal clamour,

O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his palace Wheels out his battle-bell with dreadful din, And Aztec priests upon their teocallis

Beat the wild war-drums made of serpent's skin;

The tumult of each sacked and burning village; The shout that every prayer for mercy drowns;

The soldiers' revels in the midst of pillage;
The wail of famine in beleaguered towns;

The bursting shell, the gateway wrenched asunder,

The rattling musketry, the clashing blade;
And ever and anon, in tones of thunder,
The diapason of the cannonade.

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises,
With such accursèd instruments as these,
Thou downest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,
And jarrest the celestial harmonies?

Wore half the power, that fills the world with terror,

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human miud from error,
There were no need of arsenals nor forts.

The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation, that should lift again
Its hand against a brother on its forehead
Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!
Down the dark future, through long genera-
tions,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations, I hear once more the voice of Christ say "Peace!"

In the valley of the Pegnitx, 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, time-defying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,

That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.10

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many au iron band,

Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days

Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.11

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, 12

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,13

Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.

Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,

Lived and laboured Albrecht Durer, 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.

Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies;

Dead he is not,-but departed,-for the artist never dies.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,

That he once had trod its pavement, that he once had breathed its air;

Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,

Walked of yore the Master singers, chanting rude poetic strains.

From remote and sunless suburbs, came they to

the friendly guild,

Building nests in Fame's great Temple, as in spouts the swallows build.

As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme,

And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime;

Thanking God, whose boundless wisdow makes the flowers of poesy bloom

In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

Here Hans Sachs, the cobler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,

Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, 14 in huge folios sang and laughed.

But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,

And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;

Painted by some humble artists, as in Adam Puschman's song,15

As the old man grey and dove-like, with his great white beard and long.

And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,

Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair

Vanished is the ancient splendour, and before Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a my dreamy eye faded tapestry.

Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard;

But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Ilans Sachs, thy cobbler bard.

Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,

As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay;

Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil,

The nobility of labour,-the long pedigree of toil.

THE NORMAN BARON.

Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, ou 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 de posséder des serfs, comme d'une chose peu agréable à Dieu, qui avait créé tous les hommes à son image.

THIERRY: CONQUETE 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,
Sounds of bells came faintly stealing,
Bells, that, from the neighbouring 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 lond 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 chaunted
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.
"Wassall for the kingly stranger
Born and cradled in a manger!
King, like David, priest, like Aaron,
Christ is born to set us free!"

And the lightning showed the sainted
Figures on the casement painted,
And exclaimed the shuddering baron,
"Miserere, Domine !"

In that hour of deep contrition,
He beheld, with clearer vision,"
Through all outward show and fashion
Justice, the Avenger, rise.

All the pomp of earth had vanished,
Falsehood and deceit were banished,
Reason spake more loud than passion,
And the truth wore no disguise.

Every vassal of his banner,
Every serf born to his manor,

All those wronged and wretched creatures

By his hand were freed again.

And, as on the sacred missal
He recorded their dismissal,
Death relaxed his iron features,

And the monk replied "Amen!"
Many centuries have been numbered
Since in death the baron slumbered
By the convent's sculptured portal,
Mingling with the common dust:
But the good deed, through the ages
Living in historic pages,
Brighter grows and gleams immortal,
Unconsumed by moth or rust.

In the country, on every side

Where far and wide,

Like a leopard's tawny and spotted hide,
Stretches the plain,

To the dry grass and the drier grain
How welcome is the rain!

In the furrowed land

The toilsome and patient oxen stand;

Lifting the yoke-encumbered head,

With their dilated nostrils spread,
They silently inhale

The clover-scented gale,

And the vapours that arise

From the well-watered and smoking soil. For this rest in the furrow after toil Their large and lustrious eyes

Seem to thank the Lord,

More than man's spoken word.

Wth 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
Thai 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 Potosi's o'erhanging pines!
And thus for thee, O little child,
Through many a danger and escape,
The tall ships passed the stormy cape;
For thee in foreign lands remote,
Beneath the burning, tropic skies.
The Indian peasant, chasing the wild goat,
Himself as swift and wild,

In falling, clutched the frail arbute,
The fibres of whose shallow root,
Uplifted from the soil, betrayed

The silver veins beneath it laid,

The buried treasures of dead centuries.

But, lo! thy door is left ajar!

Thou hearest footsteps from afar!
And, at the sound,

Thou turnest round

With quick and questioning eyes,
Like one, who, in a foreign land,
Beholds on every hand

Some source of wonder and surprise!

And, restlessly, impatiently,

Thou strivest, strugglest to be free.

The four walls of thy nursery

Are now like prison walls to thee.
No more thy mother's smiles,

No more the painted tiles,

Delight thee, nor the playthings on the floor, That won thy little, beating heart before; Thou strugglest for the open door.

Through these once solitary halls

Thy pattering footstep falls.

The sound of thy merry voice

Makes the old walls

Jubilant, and they rejoice

With the joy of thy young heart,

O'er the light of whose gladness

No shadows of sadness

From the sombre background of memory start.

Once, ah, once, within these walls,

One whom memory oft recalls.

The Father of his Country, dwelt.

And yonder meadows broad and damp
The fires of the besieging camp
Encircled with a burning belt.
Up and down these echong stairs,
Heavy with the weight of cares,
Sounded his majestic tread;
Yes, within this very room

Sat he in those hours of gloom,
Weary both in heart and head.'

But what are these grave thoughts to thee?

Out, out! into the open air!

Thy only dream is liberty,

Thou carest little how or where.

I see thee eager at thy play,

Now shouting to the apples on the tree,
With cheeks as round and red as they;
And now among the yellow stalks,

Among the flowering shrubs and plants,
As restless as the bee.

Along the garden walks,

The tracks of thy small carriage-wheels I trace;
And see at every turn how they efface
Whole villages of sand-roofed tents,

And voice more beautiful than a poet's books,
Or murmuring sound of water as it flows,
Thou comest back to parley with repose;
This rustic seat in the old apple-tree,
With its o'erhanging golden canopy
Of leaves illuminate with autumnal hues,
And shining with the argent light of dews,
Shall for a season be our place of rest.
Beneath us, like an oriole's pendant nest,
From which the laughing birds have taken
wing,

By thee abandoned, hangs thy vacant swing.
Dream-like the waters of the river gleam;

A sailless vessel drops adown the stream,
And like it, to a sea as wide and deep,
Thou driftest gently down the tides of sleep.

O Child! O new-born denizen

Of life's great city! on thy head
The glory of the morn is shed,
Like a celestial benizon!

Here at the portal thou dost stand.
And with thy little hand

Thou openest the mysterious gate
Into the future's undiscovered land.
I see its valves expand,

As at the touch of Fate!

Into those realms of love and hate,
Into that darkness blank and drear,
By some prophetic feeling taught,

I launched the bold, adventurous thought,
Freighted with hope and fear;

As upon subterranean streams,
In caverns unexplored and dark,
Men sometimes launch a fragile bark,
Laden with flickering fire,

And watch its swift-receding beams.
Until at length they disappear,
And in the distant dark expire.

By what astrology of fear or hope
Dare I to cast thy horoscope!

Like the new moon thy life appears;
A little strip of silver light,
And widening outward into night
The shadowy disk of future years,
And yet upon its outer rim,

A luminous circle, faint and dim,
And scarcely visible to us here,

Rounds and completes the perfect sphere;

A prophecy and intimation,

A pale and feeble adumbration,

Of the great world of light, that lies
Behind all human destinies.

Ah! if thy fate, with anguish fraught,
Should be to wet the dusty soil
With the hot tears and sweat of toil,-
To struggle with imperious thought,
Until the overburdened brain,
Weary with labour, faint with pain,
Like a jarred pendulum, retain
Only its motion, not its power,-
Remember, in that perilous hour,
When most afflicted and oppressed,
From labour there shall come forth rest.

And if a more auspicious fate
On thy advancing steps await,
Still let it ever be thy pride

To linger by the labourer's side;
With words of sympathy or song
To cheer the dreary march along
Of the great army of the poor,
O'er desert sand, o'er dangerous moor