Thus the day passed, and the evening Patiently, and still expectant, Looked he through the wooden bars, Saw the moon rise o'er the landscape, Saw the tranquil, patient stars; Till at length the bell at midnight And, from out a neighbouring farmyard, Then, with nostrils wide distended, To those stars he soared again. On the morrow, when the village But they found, upon the greensward From that hour, the fount unfailing And above, in the light Of the star-lit night, Swift birds of passage wing their flight Through the dewy atmosphere. I hear the beat Of their pinions fleet, As from the land of snow and sleet I hear the cry Of their voices high Falling dreamily through the sky, Oh say not so; Those sounds that flow In murmurs of delight and woe Come not from wings of birds. They are the throngs Of the poet's songs, Murmurs of pleasures, and pains, and wrongs, The sounds of winged words. This is the cry Of souls, that high On toiling, beating pinions, fly, From their distant flight It falls into our world of night, With the murmuring sound of rhyme. KING WITLAF'S DRINKING-HORN. WITLAF, a king of the Saxons, Ere yet his last he breathed, That, whenever they sat at their revels, So sat they once at Christmas, In their beards the red wine glistened They drank to the soul of Witlaf, They drank to the Saints and Martyrs And as soon as the horn was empty And the reader droned from the pulpit, Till the great bells of the convent, Proclaimed the midnight hour. And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney, Yet still in his pallid fingers He clutched the golden bowl, In which, like a pearl dissolving, Had sunk and dissolved his soul. But not for this their revels The jovial monks forbore, For they cried, "Fill high the goblet ! TEGNER'S DRAPA. I HEARD a voice that cried And through the misty air I saw the pallid corpse Borne through the Northern sky. Lifted the sheeted mists Around him as he passed. And the voice for ever cried, Through the dreary night, Balder the Beautiful, God of the summer sun, Light from his forehead beamed, All things in earth and air Hæder, the blind old god, The accursed mistletoe! They laid him in his ship, As on a funeral pyre. |