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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!'

Then the sound of drums aroused me. The awakened city's roar

Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once more.

Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before I was aware,

Lo, the shadow of the belfry crossed the sunillumined square!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

175

THE PICTURE-GALLERIES AT MUNICH

(Dover to Munich.)

THERE, the long dim galleries threading
May the artist's eye behold,
Breathing from the deathless canvas,
Records of the years of old.

Pallas there, and Jove, and Juno
Take once more their walks abroad,
Under Titian's fiery woodlands

And the saffron skies of Claude.

There the Amazons of Rubens
Lift the failing arm to strike,
And the pale light falls in masses
On the horsemen of Vandyke.

And in Berghem's pools reflected
Hang the cattle's graceful shapes,
And Murillo's soft boy-faces

Laugh amid the Seville grapes.

And all purest, loveliest fancies
That in poets' souls may dwell
Started into shape and substance
At the touch of Raphael.

Lo, her wan arms folded meekly,
And the glory of her hair
Falling as a robe around her,

Kneels the Magdalen in prayer.

And the white-robed Virgin-mother
Smiles, as centuries back she smiled,

Half in gladness, half in wonder,
On the calm face of her Child.

And that mighty Judgment-vision
Tells how man essayed to climb
Up the ladder of the ages,

Past the frontier-walls of Time;

Heard the trumpet-echoes rolling
Thro' the phantom-peopled sky,
And the still voice bid this mortal
Put on immortality.

Charles Stuart Calverley.

176

THE MASTER-BUILDER

(The Problem.)

NOT from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
Never from lips of cunning fell

The thrilling Delphic oracle;

Out from the heart of Nature rolled
The burdens of the Bible old;

The litanies of nations came,
Like the volcano's tongue of flame,

Up from the burning core below,-
The canticles of love and woe;

The hand that rounded Peter's dome,
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome,
Wrought in a sad sincerity;

Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew,--
The conscious stone to beauty grew.

Knowst thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
Of leaves and feathers from her breast?
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell,
Painting with morn each annual cell?

Or how the sacred pine-tree adds
To her old leaves new myriads?
Such and so grew these holy piles,
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles.
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon
As the best gem upon her zone;
And Morning opes with haste her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er England's abbeys bends the sky,
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air;
And Nature gladly gave them place,
Adapted them into her race,
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat.

These temples grew as grows the grass;
Art might obey, but not surpass.
The passive Master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within.

Ever the fiery Pentecost

Girds with one flame the countless host,
Trances the heart through chanting choirs,
And through the priest the mind inspires.

The word unto the prophet spoken
Was writ on tables yet unbroken;
The word by seers or sybils told,
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold,
Still floats upon the morning wind,
Still whispers to the willing mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

177

TO HELEN

HELEN, thy beauty is to me

Like those Nicèan barks of yore,
That gently o'er a perfumed sea,

The weary way-worn wanderer bore
To his own native shore.

On desperate seas long wont to roam,
Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face,
Thy Naiad airs have brought me home
To the glory that was Greece,
And the grandeur that was Rome.

Lo, in yon brilliant window-niche

How statue-like I see thee stand, The agate lamp within thy hand! Ah, Psyche, from the regions which Are Holy Land!

Edgar Allan Poe.

178

THE SWAN-NECK

EVIL Sped the battle-play

On the Pope Calixtus' day;

Mighty war-smiths, thanes and lords,
In Senlac slept the sleep of swords.
Harold Earl, shot over shield,

Lay along the autumn weald;
Slaughter such was never none
Since the Ethelings England won.
Thither Lady Githa came,
Weeping sore for grief and shame;
How may she her first-born tell?
Frenchman stripped him where he fell,

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