THE BELFRY OF BRUGES.

In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry old and brown;

Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the town.

As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty tower I stood,

And the world threw off the darkness, like the

weeds of widowhood.

Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with streams and vapors gray,

Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape lay.

At my feet the city slumbered. From its chimneys, here and there,

Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like, into air.

Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning hour,

But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient

tower.

From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows wild and high;

And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed

more distant than the sky.

Then most musical and solemn, bringing back

the olden times,

With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,

Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the nuns sing in the choir;

And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a friar.

Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my brain;

They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;

All the Foresters of Flanders, — mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer,

Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy, Philip, Guy de Dampierre.

I beheld the pageants splendid, that adorned

those days of old;

Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece of Gold;

Lombard and Venetian merchants with deepladen argosies;

Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.

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;

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

Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest.

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!"