SONGS. TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK. WE ELCOME, 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, There are marks of age, There are thumb-marks on thy margin, 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, Yet dost thou recall Days departed, half-forgotten, When I paused to hear The old ballad of King Christian, Shouted from suburban taverns 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, Once in Elsinore, At the court of old King Hamlet, Once Prince Frederick's Guard Joined the chorus! Peasants in the field, Sailors on the roaring ocean, Students, tradesmen, pale mechanics, All have sung them. 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 AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY, THE day is ending, The river dead. The bell is pealing, To the dismal knell; Shadows are trailing, Like a funeral bell. 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 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 Then in vain o'er tower and turret, From the walls and woodland nests, Time has long effaced the inscriptions Where repose the poet's bones. |