Life's endless toil and endeavour; Read from some humbler poet, Who, through long days of labour, Such songs have power to quiet Then read from the treasured volume And lend to the rhyme of the poet And the night shall be filled with music, AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY. THE day is ending, The night is descending; The river dead. Through clouds like ashes On village-windows That glimmer red. The snow recommences; The buried fences Mark no longer The road o'er the plain; While through the meadows, A funeral train. The bell is pealing, To the dismal knell; Shadows are trailing, Like a funeral bell. TO AN OLD DANISH SONG BOOK. WELCOME, my old friend, While the sullen gales of autumn The ungrateful world Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee. There are marks of age, There are thumb-marks on thy margin, Made by hands that clasped thee rudely At the alehouse. Thou recallest homes Where thy songs of love and friendship Once some ancient Scald, Once in Elsinore, At the court of old King Hamlet, Once Prince Frederick's Guard Joined the chorus! Peasants in the field, Sailors on the roaring ocean, Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, Thou hast been their friend; And, as swallows build In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys, Quiet, close, and warm, Sheltered from all molestation, And recalling by their voices WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID. 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 Saying, "From these wandering minstrels Let me now repay the lessons They have taught so well and long." Thus the bard of love departed; On his tomb the birds were feasted Day by day, o'er tower and turret, On the tree whose heavy branches On the cross-bars of each window, There they sang their merry carols, 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, Then in vain, with cries discordant, Time has long effaced the inscriptions And tradition only tells us Where repose the poet's bones. But around the vast cathedral, DRINKING SONG. INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER. COME, old friend, sit down and listen! Old Silenus, bloated, drunken, Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow; And possessing youth eternal. Round about him, fair Bacchantes, Thus he won, through all the nations, Vines for banners, ploughs for armour. Judged by no o'erzealous rigour, These are ancient ethnic revels Now to rivulets from the mountains Claudius, though he sang of flagons |