THE BELFRY OF BRUGES, ETC. CARILLON. In the ancient town of Bruges, For a moment woke the echoes But amid my broken slumbers And I thought how like these chimes All his rhymes and roundelays, Yet perchance a sleepless wight, When the dusk and hush of night Of daylight and its toil and strife, Till he hears, or dreams he hears, Intermingled with the song, Thoughts that he has cherished long; Thus dreamed I, as by night I lay To the chimes that, through the night, 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 vapours grey, 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, 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,3-mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, 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 deep-laden argosies; 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." 8 And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with terror smote; Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and dike of sand, once more. Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware, Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square. |