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,

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

the ancient tower.

sang

From their nests beneath the rafters 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;

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.

Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,

When the death-angel touches those swift keys!

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.

Will mingle with their awful sympho

And loud, amid the universal clamor, O'er distant deserts sounds the Tartar gong.

I hear the Florentine, who from his pal

ace

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 accursed instruments as these,

Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices,

And jarrest the celestial harmonies ?

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

Were half the wealth, bestowed on camps and courts,

Given to redeem the human mind from

And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,

I hear once more the voice of Christ say, "Peace!"

Peace and no longer from its brazen portals

The blast of War's great organ shakes the skies!

But beautiful as songs of the immortals, The holy melodies of love arise.

NUREMBERG.

IN the valley of the Pegnitz, 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, timedefying, centuries old;

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

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

In the court-yard of the castle, bound
with many an 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.

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.

church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,

The echoing sounds grow fainter and

And in

then cease;

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

a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.

Here, when Art was still religion, with a
simple, reverent heart,
Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, 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.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!

Through these streets so l road and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains.

From remote and sunless suburbs came

they to the friendly guild,

to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.

Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye

Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.

The

of toil.

-the long pedigree

THE NORMAN BARON.

Dans les moments de la vie où la réflexion devient plus calme et plus profonde, où 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 agré

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 wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.

Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, lau

reate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.

But his house is now an ale-house, with

a nicely sanded floor,

image.

THIERRY, Conquête 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,

face above the door;

Painted by some humble artist, as in

Adam Puschman's song,

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