DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT. But at length the feverish day Filled and overflowed the night And lowliness and humility, The richest and rarest of all dowers? Who shall tell us? No one speaks; No colour shoots into those cheeks, Either of anger or of pride, At the rude question we have asked; Nor will the mystery be unmasked By those who are sleeping at her side. Hereafter?--And do you think to look On the terrible pages of that Book To find her failings, faults, and errors? Ah, you will then have other cares, In your own short-comings and despairs, In your own secret sins and terrors! THE EMPEROR'S BIRD'S NEST. ONCE the Emperor Charles of Spain, With his swarthy, grave commanders, I forget in what campaign, Long besieged, in mud and rain, Some old frontier town of Flanders. Up and down the dreary camp, In great boots of Spanish leather, Striding with a measured tramp, These Hidalgos, dull and damp, Cursed the Frenchmen, cursed the weather. Thus as to and fro they went, Over upland and through hollow, Giving their impatience vent, Perched upon the Emperor's tent In her nest they spied a swallow. Built of clay and hair of horses, As he twirled his gray mustachio, Coupled with those words of malice, Half in anger, half in shame, Forth the great campaigner came Slowly from his canvas palace. *Macho, in Spanish, signifies a mule. Golondrina is the feminine form of Golondrino, a swallow, and also a cant name for a deserter. "Let no hand the bird molest," Said he solemnly, "nor hurt her!" Adding then, by way of jest, "Golondrina is my guest, 'Tis the wife of some deserter!" Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, Through the camp was spread the rumour, And the soldiers, as they quaffed At the Emperor's pleasant humour. So unharmed and unafraid Sat the swallow still and brooded, Till the constant cannonade Through the walls a breach had made, And the siege was thus concluded. Then the army, elsewhere bent, Struck its tents as if disbanding, Only not the Emperor's tent, For he ordered, ere he went, Very curtly, "Leave it standing!" So it stood there all alone, Loosely flapping, torn and tattered, Till the brood was fledged and flown, Singing o'er those walls of stone Which the cannon-shot had shattered. strange, Of foreign accent, and of different climes; Alvares and Rivera interchange With Abraham and Jacob of old times. "Blessed be God! for He created Death!" The mourners said, "and death is rest and peace; Then added, in the certainty of faith, "And giveth Life that never more shall cease." Closed are the portals of their Synagogue, No Psalms of David now the silence break, No Rabbi reads the ancient Decalogue In the grand dialect the Prophets spake. Gone are the living, but the dead remain, And not neglected; for a head unseen, Scattering its bounty, like a summer rain, Still keeps their graves and their remembrance green. OLIVER BASSELIN.* IN the Valley of the Vire Still is seen an ancient mill, With its gables quaint and queer, And beneath the window-sill, On the stone, These words alone: "Oliver Basselin lived here." Far above it, on the steep, Ruined stands the old Château; Stare at the skies, Stare at the valley green and deep. Once a convent, old and brown, Looked, but ah! it looks no more, From the neighbouring hillside down On the rushing and the roar Of the stream Only made to be his nest, dreamed; All the lovely valley seemed; Of soaring higher Stirred or fluttered in his breast. Of this green earth * Oliver Basselin, the "Père joyeux du Vaudeville," flourished in the fifteenth century, and gave to his convivial songs the name of his native valleys, in which he sang them, Vauxde-Vire. This name was afterwards corrupted into the modern Vaudeville. From the alehouse and the inn, In the castle, cased in steel, Songs that lowlier hearts could feel. Found other chimes, Gone are all the knights and squires, Gone the abbot stern and cold, And the brotherhood of friars; Not a name Remains to fame, From those mouldering days of old! But the poet's memory here Of the landscape makes a part; Like the river, swift and clear, Flows his song through many a heart; Haunting still That ancient mill, In the Valley of the Vire. Hearty and hale was Othere, His cheek had the colour of oak; With a kind of laugh in his speech, Like the sea-tide on a beach, As unto the King he spoke. And wrote down the wondrous tale "So far I live to the northward, From the harbour of Skeringes-hale, With sheep and swine beside; With their sagas of the seas:- For thinking of those seas. "To the northward stretched the desert, But I did not slacken sail "The days grew longer and longer, Of the red midnight sun. "And then uprose before nie, Upon the water's edge, The huge and haggard shape Of that unknown North Cape, Whose form is like a wedge. "The sea was rough and stormy, The tempest howled and wailed, And the sea-fog, like a ghost, Haunted that dreary coast, But onward still I sailed. "Four days I steered to eastward, He neither paused nor stirred, And wrote down every word. "And now the land," said Othere, "Bent southward suddenly, And I followed the curving shore, And ever southward bore Into a nameless sea. "And there we hunted the walrus, In two days and no more And dragged them to the strand!" And Othere, the old sea-captain, |