The accursed mistletoe! They laid him in his ship, With horse and harness, As on a funeral pyre. Odin placed
A ring upon his finger,
And whispered in his ear.
They launched the burning ship!
It floated far away
Over the misty sea,
Till like the sun it seemed, Sinking beneath the waves. Balder returned no more! So perish the old Gods!
But out of the sea of Time
Rises a new land of song,
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Fairer than the old.
Over its meadows green
Walk the young bards and sing. Build it again,
O ye bards,
Fairer than before!
Ye fathers of the new race, Feed upon morning dew, Sing the new Song of Love! The law of force is dead! The law of love prevails! Thor, the thunderer,
Shall rule the earth no more, No more, with threats, Challenge the meek Christ. Sing no more,
O ye bards of the North, Of Vikings and of Jarls! Of the days of Eld
Preserve the freedom only, Not the deeds of blood! SONNET
ON MRS. KEMBLE'S READINGS FROM SHAKESPEARE O precious evenings! all too swiftly sped!
Leaving us heirs to amplest heritages
Of all the best thoughts of the greatest sages, And giving tongues unto the silent dead!
How our hearts glowed and trembled as she read, Interpreting by tones the wondrous pages
Of the great poet who foreruns the ages, Anticipating all that shall be said!
O happy Reader! having for thy text
The magic book, whose Sibylline leaves have caught
The rarest essence of all human thought! O happy Poet! by no critic vext!
How must thy listening spirit now rejoice
To be interpreted by such a voice! THE SINGERS
God sent his Singers upon earth
With songs of sadness and of mirth,
That they might touch the hearts of men, And bring them back to heaven again. The first, a youth, with soul of fire,
Held in his hand a golden lyre;
Through groves he wandered, and by streams, Playing the music of our dreams.
The second, with a bearded face, Stood singing in the market-place,
And stirred with accents deep and loud
The hearts of all the listening crowd. A gray old man, the third and last, Sang in cathedrals dim and vast, While the majestic organ rolled Contrition from its mouths of gold.
And those who heard the Singers three
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Disputed which the best might be; For still their music seemed to start Discordant echoes in each heart, But the great Master said, "I see
No best in kind, but in degree; I gave a various gift to each,
To charm, to strengthen, and to teach. "These are the three great chords of might, And he whose ear is tuned aright
Will hear no discord in the three, But the most perfect harmony." SUSPIRIA
Take them, O Death! and bear away Whatever thou canst call thine own! Thine image, stamped upon this clay, Doth give thee that, but that alone! Take them, O Grave! and let them lie Folded upon thy narrow shelves,
As garments by the soul laid by, And precious only to ourselves! Take them, O great Eternity!
Our little life is but a gust
That bends the branches of thy tree, And trails its blossoms in the dust! HYMN
FOR MY BROTHER'S ORDINATION
Christ to the young man said: "Yet one thing more; If thou wouldst perfect be,
Sell all thou hast and give it to the poor, And come and follow me!"
Within this temple Christ again, unseen, Those sacred words hath said,
And his invisible hands to-day have been
Laid on a young man's head.
And evermore beside him on his way
The unseen Christ shall move,
That he may lean upon his arm and say, "Dost thou, dear Lord, approve?"
Beside him at the marriage feast shall be, To make the scene more fair;
Beside him in the dark Gethsemane
Of pain and midnight prayer.
O holy trust! O endless sense of rest! Like the beloved John
To lay his head upon the Saviour's breast, And thus to journey on!
***************
THE SONG OF HIAWATHA <Notes from HIAWATHA follow> INTRODUCTION
Should you ask me, whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions, With the odors of the forest
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With the dew and damp of meadows, With the curling smoke of wigwams, With the rushing of great rivers,
With their frequent repetitions, And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?
I should answer, I should tell you, "From the forests and the prairies, From the great lakes of the Northland, From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors, and fen-lands Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as I heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer." Should you ask where Nawadaha
Found these songs so wild and wayward, Found these legends and traditions,
I should answer, I should tell you, "In the bird's-nests of the forest, In the lodges of the beaver,
In the hoof-prints of the bison, In the eyry of the eagle!
"All the wild-fowl sang them to him, In the moorlands and the fen-lands,
In the melancholy marshes; Chetowaik, the plover, sang them, Mahng, the loon, the wild-goose, Wawa, The blue heron, the Shuh-shuh-gah, And the grouse, the Mushkodasa!"
If still further you should ask me, Saying, "Who was Nawadaha?
Tell us of this Nawadaha,"
I should answer your inquiries Straightway in such words as follow. "In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley, By the pleasant water-courses, Dwelt the singer Nawadaha. Round about the Indian village
Spread the meadows and the cornfields, And beyond them stood the forest, Stood the groves of singing pine-trees, Green in Summer, white in Winter,
Ever sighing, ever singing.
"And the pleasant water-courses,
You could trace them through the valley, By the rushing in the Springtime,
By the alders in the Summer,
By the white fog in the Autumn, By the black line in the Winter; And beside them dwelt the singer, In the vale of Tawasentha,
In the green and silent valley. "There he sang of Hiawatha, Sang the Song of Hiawatha,
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Sang his wondrous birth and being, How he prayed and how he fasted, How he lived, and toiled, and suffered, That the tribes of men might prosper, That