From that fiery blood of dragons Even Redi, though he chaunted Then with water fill the pitcher Come, old friend, sit down and listen! THE OLD CLOCK ON THE STAIRS. SOMEWHAT back from the village-street Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw By day its voice is low and light; And seems to say, at each chamber-door,"For ever-never! Never-for ever!" 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,"For ever-never! Never-for ever!" In that mansion used to be His great fires up the chimney roared; Never-for ever!" There groups of merry children played, Those hours the ancient timepiece told,- Never for ever!" From that chamber, clothed in white, The dead lay in his shroud of snow; Never-for ever!" All are scattered now and fled, Never here, for ever there, The horologe of Eternity Sayeth this incessantly, "For ever-never! Never-for ever!" THE ARROW AND THE SONG. I SHOT an arrow into the air, I breathed a song into the air, Long, long afterward, in an oak SONNETS. THE EVENING STAR. Lo! in the painted oriel of the West, AUTUMN. THOU Comest, Autumn, heralded by the rain, With banners, by great gales incessant fanned, Brighter than brightest silks of Samarcand, And stately oxen harnessed to thy wain! Thou standest, like imperial Charlemagne,4 DANTE. TUSCAN, that wanderest through the realms of gloom, Thy sacred song is like the trump of doom; As up the convent-walls, in golden streaks, ON MRS. KEMBLE'S READINGS FROM SHAKSPEARE. O PRECIOUS evenings! all too swiftly sped! . Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages, How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read, Of the great Poet who foreruns the ages, Anticipating all that shall be said! O happy Reader! having for thy text The magic book, whose sybilline leaves have caught The rarest essence of all human thought! O happy Poet, by no critic vext! How must thy listening spirit now rejoice BALLADS. THE SKELETON IN ARMOUR. [THE following ballad was suggested to me while riding on the seashore at Newport. A year or two previous, a skeleton had been dug up at Fall River, clad in broken and corroded armour; and the idea occurred to me of connecting it with the Round Tower at Newport, generally known hitherto as the Old Windmill, though now claimed by the Danes as a work of their early ancestors. Professor Rafn, in the Mémoires de la Sociéte Royale des Antiquaires du Nord, 1838-1839, says: "There is no mistaking in this instance the style in which the more ancient stone edifices of the North were constructed, the style which belongs to the Roman or ante-Gothic architecture, and which, especially after the time of Charlemagne, diffused itself from Italy over the whole of the west and north of Europe, where it continued to predominate until the close of the twelfth century; that style which some authors have, from one of its most striking characteristics, called the round-arch style, the same which in England is denominated Saxon, and sometimes Norman architecture. "On the ancient structure in Newport there are no ornaments remaining, which might possibly have served to guide us in assigning the probable date of its erection. That no vestige whatever is found of the pointed arch, nor any approximation to it, is indicative of an earlier rather than of a later period. From such characteristics as remain, however, we can scarcely form any other inference than one, in which I am persuaded that all who are familiar with old-northern architecture will concur, THAT THIS BUILDING WAS ERECTED AT A PERIOD DECIDEDLY NOT LATER THAN THE TWELFTH CENTURY. This remark applies, of course, to the original building only, and not to the alterations that it subsequently received; for there are several such alterations in the upper part of the building which cannot be mistaken, and which were most likely occasioned by its being adapted in modern times to various uses-for example, as the substructure of a windmill, and latterly as a hay-magazine. To the same times may be referred the windows, the fire-place, and the apertures made above the columns. That this building could not have been erected for a windmill, is what an architect will easily discern." I will not enter into a discussion of the point. It is sufficiently well established for the purpose of a ballad; though, doubtless, many an honest citizen of Newport, who has passed his days within sight of the Round Tower, will be ready to exclaim with Sancho: "God bless me! did I not warn you to have a care of what you were doing, for that it was nothing but a windmill, and nobody could mistake it, but one who had the like in his head."] "SPEAK! speak! thou fearful guest! Comest to daunt me! |