DAYLIGHT AND MOONLIGHT.
IN broad daylight, and at noon,
Yesterday I saw the moon
Sailing high, but faint and white,
As a schoolboy's paper kite.
In broad daylight, yesterday,
I read a Poet's mystic lay;
And it seemed to me at most
As a phantom or a ghost.

But at length the feverish day
Like a passion died away,
And the night, serene and still,
Fell on village, vale, and hill.
Then the moon, in all her pride,
Like a spirit glorified,

Filled and overflowed the night
With revelations of her light.
And the Poet's song again
Passed like music through my brain;
Night interpreted to me
All its grace and mystery.

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.
Yes, it was a swallow's nest,

Built of clay and hair of horses,
Mane, or tail, or dragoon's crest,
Found on hedge-rows east and west,
After skirmish of the forces.
Then an old Hidalgo said,

As he twirled his gray mustachio,
"Sure this swallow overhead
Thinks the Emperor's tent a shed,
And the Emperor but a Macho!"*
Hearing his imperial name

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
Flemish beer at dinner, laughed

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;
Nothing but the donjon-keep
Left for shelter or for show.
Its vacant eyes

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;
No desire

Of soaring higher

Stirred or fluttered in his breast.
True, his songs were not divine;
Were not songs of that high art,
Which, as winds do in the pine,
Find an answer in each heart:
But the mirth

Of this green earth
Laughed and revelled in his line.

* 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,
Opening on the narrow street,
Came the loud convivial din,
Singing and applause of feet,
The laughing lays
That in those days
Sang the poet Basselin.

In the castle, cased in steel,
Knights, who fought at Agincourt,
Watched and waited, spur on heel;
But the poet sang for sport
Songs that rang
Another clang,

Songs that lowlier hearts could feel.
In the convent, clad in gray,
Sat the monks in lonely cells,
Paced the cloisters, knelt to pray,
And the poet heard their bells;
But his rhymes

Found other chimes,
Nearer to the earth than they.
Gone are all the barons bold,

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 Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Had a book upon his knees,

And wrote down the wondrous tale
Of him who was first to sail
Into the Arctic seas.

"So far I live to the northward,
No man lives north of me;
To the east are wild mountain-chains,
And beyond them meres and plains;
To the westward all is sea.
"So far I live to the northward,

From the harbour of Skeringes-hale,
If you only sailed by day,
With a fair wind all the way,
More than a month would you sail.
"I own six hundred reindeer,

With sheep and swine beside;
I have tribute from the Finns,
Whalebone and rein-deer skins,
And ropes of walrus-hide.
"I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old seafaring men
Came to me now and then,

With their sagas of the seas:-
"Of Iceland and of Greenland,
And the stormy Hebrides,
And the undiscovered deep ;-
I could not eat nor sleep

For thinking of those seas.

"To the northward stretched the desert,
How far I fain would know;
So at last I sallied forth,
And three days sailed due north,
As far as the whale-ships go.
"To the west of me was the ocean,
To the right the desolate shore,

But I did not slacken sail
For the walrus or the whale,
Till after three days more.

"The days grew longer and longer,
Till they became as one,
And southward through the haze
I saw the sullen blaze

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,
Four days without a night:
Round in a fiery ring
Went the great sun, O King,
With red and lurid light.'
Here Alfred, King of the Saxons,
Ceased writing for a while;
And raised his eyes from his book,
With a strange and puzzled look,
And an incredulous smile.
But Othere, the old sea-captain,

He neither paused nor stirred,
Till the King listened, and then
Once more took up his pen,

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,
The narwhale, and the seal;
Ha! 'twas a noble game!
And like the lightning's flame
Flew our harpoons of steel.
"There were six of us altogether,
Norsemen of Helgoland;

In two days and no more
We killed of them threescore,

And dragged them to the strand!"
Here Alfred, the Truth-Teller,
Suddenly closed his book,
And lifted his blue eyes,
With doubt and strange surmise
Depicted in their look.

And Othere, the old sea-captain,
Stared at him wild and weird,
Then smiled, till his shining teeth
Gleamed white from underneath
His tawny, quivering beard.