God's mother sits at Kevlaar,
With jewels in her hair;
To-day she wears her diamonds,
For many guests are there.
The sick with votive offerings.
Have come from many lands,
To hang upon her altar

Their waxen feet and hands.
For when one offers a waxen hand,
His hand is cured of its wound;
And when one offers a waxen foot,
His foot at once is sound.
Many who came on crutches
Go running and dancing away,

And those whose fingers were stiff as sticks
On the violin can play.

Out of a waxen candle

The mother formed a heart :

"Give this to Holy Mary,

And she will cure thy smart! Sadly he took the image,

Went sadly to the shrine,
And, words with tears commingled,
He cried: "O Maid divine!
O Queen of heaven and angels!
Receive my bitter moan.
I dwell with my poor mother,
In a street of fair Cologne;
Where, in three hundred churches,
Men go to sing and pray;
And near to us lived Gretchen,
And she is dead to-day!

I bring this waxen image,
The image of my heart;
Heal thou my bitter sorrow,
And cure my deadly smart!
Do this, and every morning,
Evening, and all day long,
Hail to thee, Blessed Mary,
Shall be my prayer and song!"

III.

The sick son and his mother
Slept in a little room;

Then came the Blessed Virgin,

Soft stepping through the gloom.

She bent above the sick man,
And on his heart she laid

Her gentle hand, — then, smiling,

Passed, like a mist, the Maid.
The mother, in her slumber

Had seen the whole event;

Then wakened, for the frightened dogs
Howled, as the Virgin went.

He lay stretched out before her,
Her son, and he was dead ;
Aud on his thin and pallid cheek
The morning sun burned red.
The mother knew not how she felt,
But bent in peace her head;

THE

Kitzen.

LEAVE-TAKING FROM LIFE.

HE deep wound burns, my parched lips coldly quiver,

I feel, by my faint heart's unsteady beating,
That the last pulse of my young life is fleeting, —
God, to thy hands my spirit I deliver!

How sounds of coming death all harshly sever
The fair dream-music, where bright forms were meeting!
Yet, courage! what hath given my heart true greeting,
I shall yet keep to dwell with me forever!

And all towards which my worship here ascended,
What my hot youth, with fieriest zeal defended,
Now viewed in Freedom, once with Love all blended,
I see, as a light seraph, o'er me flying,

And whilst each fainting sense is slowly dying,

It wafts sweet airs with Heaven's morn-fragrance sighing!

Karl Theodor Körner. Tr. W. B. Chorley.

Koesen.

A LEGEND OF KOESEN BRIDGE.

LONG, long ago in Thüringen,

Upon the Saale's shore

A shepherd loved a shepherdess:
His love was tried sore;

For on the left bank he his flock
Did tend, while on the right

Was hers, but yet across the stream
Their true love they did plight.

One day Count Rudolph riding by,
It pleased him to command
His vassals here to build a bridge
For his Thüringian land.

Soon was the work begun, huge stones
Were lowered in the stream,

And the shepherd lad he danced to think
Fulfilled might be his dream.

Though in the building of the bridge

Full many a year had flown, The love of that true, loving pair

Had but intenser grown.

At length the road across the stream
Was free; to yonder side

The shepherd drove his little flock,
There to embrace his bride.

The shepherdess was eager too
To meet her own true, love,
So towards the new-built bridge her flock
She with a full heart drove,

And on the bridge these lovers met,

They vowed they ne'er would part, To seal their love then each one carved Upon the brink a heart.

Those lovers twain were soon relieved

Of separation's woe,

And their two flocks from that day forth
Together grazed below.

E'en to this day those hearts remain

In passing o'er the bridge to look, "T is where those lovers met !

George Browning.