Shadows are trailing, Like a funeral bell. TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK. WELCOME, my old friend, Welcome to a foreign fireside, While the sullen gales of autumn Shake the windows. The ungrateful world Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee, Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee. There are marks of age, There are thumb-marks on thy margin, Made by hands that clasped thee rudely At the alehouse. Soiled and dull thou art; Yellow are thy time-worn pages, As the russet, rain-molested Leaves of autumn. Thou art stained with wine Scattered from hilarious goblets, As these leaves with the libations Yet dost thou recall Days departed, half-forgotten, When in dreamy youth I wandered When I paused to hear The old ballad of King Christian Thou recallest bards, Who, in solitary chambers, And with hearts by passion wasted, Thou recallest homes Where thy songs of love and friendship Made the gloomy northern winter Bright as summer. Once some ancient Scald, In his bleak, ancestral Iceland, Chanted staves of these old ballads To the Vikings. Once in Elsinore, At the court of old King Hamlet, Yorick and his boon companions Once Prince Frederick's Guard Suddenly the English cannon Peasants in the field, Sailors on the roaring ocean, Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, Thou hast been their friend; They, alas, have left thee friendless! And, as swallows build In these wide, old-fashioned chimneys, Quiet, close, and warm, Sheltered from all molestation, And recalling by their voices WALTER VON DER VOGELWEID. VOGELWEID the Minnesinger, When he left this world of ours, Laid his body in the cloister, Under Würtzburg's minster towers. And he gave the monks his treasures, Saying, "From these wandering minstrels Let me now repay the lessons They have taught so well and long." Thus the bard of love departed; And, fulfilling his desire, On his tomb the birds were feasted Day by day, o'er tower and turret, On the tree whose heavy branches On the pavement, on the tombstone, On the cross-bars of each window, They renewed the War of Wartburg, There they sang their merry carols, Till at length the portly abbot Murmured, "Why this waste of food? Be it changed to loaves henceforward For our fasting brotherhood." Then in vain o'er tower and turret, Then in vain, with cries discordant, Time has long effaced the inscriptions On the cloister's funeral stones, And tradition only tells us Where repose the poet's bones. But around the vast cathedral, DRINKING SONG. INSCRIPTION FOR AN ANTIQUE PITCHER. COME, old friend, sit down and listen! Old Silenus, bloated, drunken, Fauns with youthful Bacchus follow ; And possessing youth eternal. Round about him, fair Bacchantes, Bearing cymbals, flutes, and thyrses; Wild from Naxian groves, or Zante's Vineyards, sing delirious verses. Thus he won, through all the nations, Bore, as trophies and oblations, Vines for banners, ploughs for armour. Judged by no o'erzealous rigour, Much this mystic throng expresses. These are ancient ethnic revels Of a faith long since forsaken ; Now the Satyrs, changed to devils, Frighten mortals wine-o'ertaken. |