Nor yet stole sweetly over the cool
Wave, as it glided into a pool,
A vesper hymn
From the forest dim,
Nor bells from Allerheiligen!
Flew twenty summers; the monks were there
In a cloistral solitude:
How few that heard the chanted prayer
Divined the worldly feud
'Mong lives monotonous and pale,
Whom weariness would oft assail!
Yet holy-hearted, gentle men
Paced the echoing cloister then,
Learnéd, and kindly to the poor;
Some sorely worn who sought to lure,
Rest to a weary wounded heart;
And where the mountain cleaves apart,
Such an one, ere the day's decline
Like an illumined vellum fine,
Mused oft upon the sombre green,
Beyond the fluttering watersheen,
Of piny hills, toward the sky
Receding with a softer dye,
And ever with an airier bloom,
Till they are fading to a fume:
Now at eve stole o'er the cool
Wave, as it glided into a pool,
A vesper hymn
From the forest dim,
And bells from Allerheiligen!
Seven hundred summers; the monks are gone:
Their abbey in the wood
Resigns in every mouldered stone
A human brotherhood!
Ivy and vine and roses vie
With old flamboyant tracery:
Lo! the carven corbel where
Hangs a tiny garden fair;
Birds have sown it as they pass
With fairy mosses and with grass;
A wild bee in a dim chapelle,
Hovering near a flowerbell,
With a drowsy murmur droning,
Imitates a priest intoning,
With his lowly eyes intent
Upon the Holy Sacrament!
Wild geranium and fir
Perfume the air, in place of myrrh,
Breathing from a thurifer:
Winds are jubilant, wail, complain,
Where many a blaze of jewel-pane
Heard the tempestuous anthem heave and wane!
Winds intone a wondrous hymn
In yonder aisles of forest dim;
But a frail harebell
Is the only bell,
Hangs now in Allerheiligen !
THE SOURCE OF THE DANUBE.
OT, like his great compeers, indignantly
Doth Danube spring to life!
(Who loves the cross, yet to the crescent's gleam
Unfolds a willing breast) with infant glee
Slips from his prison walls and Fancy, free
To follow in his track of silver light,
Reaches, with one brief moment's rapid flight,
The vast encincture of that gloomy sea
Whose waves the Orphean lyre forbade to meet
In conflict; whose rough winds forgot their jars
To waft the heroic progeny of Greece;
When the first ship sailed for the golden fleece,-
Argo, exalted for that daring feat
To fix in heaven her shape distinct with stars.
ON THE DANUBE NEAR ITS SOURCE.
S one who gazes on a child whose look
Betokens promise, and whose bright career
Is seen without or augury or seer,
Even so I gaze upon this little brook,
Wimpling away from its sequestered nook;
And view the river as he rolls along,
Through lands embalmed in history and song;
Where peaceful now the reaper plies his hook.
I see the hero Sobieski come,
To quell the host that threatened Christendom:
The Roman and the Greek methinks I see;
The fiery Hun, the Dacian, vainly bold;
The barbarous Cossack and fierce Osmanli :
Yes, for it is the Danube I behold!
Blenheim (Blindheim).
THE BATTLE OF BLENHEIM.
T was a summer evening;
Old Kaspar's work was done,
And he before his cottage-door
Was sitting in the sun;
And by him sported on the green
His little grandchild Wilhelmine.
She saw her brother Peterkin
Roll something large and round, Which he beside the rivulet,
In playing there, had found:
He came to ask what he had found,
That was so large and smooth and round.
Old Kaspar took it from the boy,
Who stood expectant by;
And then the old man shook his head,
And with a natural sigh,
""T is some poor fellow's skull," said he, "Who fell in the great victory.
“I find them in the garden,
For there's many hereabout; And often, when I go to plough,
The ploughshare turns them out; For many thousand men," said he, "Were slain in that great victory."
"Now tell us what 't was all about,"
Young Peterkin he cries;
And little Wilhelmine looks up
With wonder-waiting eyes;
"Now tell us all about the war,
And what they fought each other for."
"It was the English," Kaspar cried,
"Who put the French to rout;
But what they fought each other for
I could not well make out;
But everybody said," quoth he,
"My father lived at Blenheim then,
Yon little stream hard by;
They burnt his dwelling to the ground,
And he was forced to fly;
So with his wife and child he fled,
Nor had he where to rest his head.
"With fire and sword the country round Was wasted far and wide,
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