I bore it; friends soothed me; my grief looked sublime And letters still came, shorter, sadder, more strong, Who forbids our complaint !" My Nanni would add, "he was safe, and aware On which, without pause, up the telegraph-line Tell his mother. Ah, ah, "his," "their" mother,—not "mine," No voice says my mother" again to me. What! You think Guido forgot? Are souls straight so happy that, dizzy with Heaven, O Christ of the seven wounds, who look'dst through the dark To the face of Thy mother! consider, I pray, How we common mothers stand desolate, mark, Whose sons, not being Christs, die with eyes turned away, And no last word to say! MOTHER AND POET. Both boys dead? but that's out of nature. 61 We all Have been patriots, yet each house must always keep one. 'Twere imbecile, hewing out roads to a wall; And, when Italy's made, for what end is it done, Ah, ah, ah! when Gaeta's taken, what then? When the fair wicked queen sits no more at her sport When Venice and Rome keep their new jubilee, When your flag takes all heaven for its white, green, and red, When you have your country from mountain to sea, When King Victor has Italy's crown on his head, (And I have my dead), What then? Do not mock me. Ah, ring your bells low, And burn your lights faintly! Above the star pricked by the last peak of snow: Forgive me. Some women bear children in strength, When the man-child is born. Dead! One of them shot by the sea in the east, ELIZABETH B. BROWNING. IN Nuremberg. N the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow lands Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands; Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, Memories haunt thy pointed gables like the rooks that round them throng; Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors rough and bold, Had their dwellings in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted in their uncouth rhyme, That their great, imperial city stretched its hand to every clime. In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand; On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust: NUREMBERG. 63 In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple reverent heart, Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art; Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies, Dead he is not—but departed—for the Artist never dies: Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air. Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains; From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. As the weaver plied the shuttle wove he too the mystic rhyme, And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime, Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; Painted by some humble artist as in Adam Puschman's song, As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair. Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye Wave these mingling shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard, But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler-bard. Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay; Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, The nobility of labor,-the long pedigree of toil. HENRY W. LONGFELLOW. A Bingen on the Rhine. SOLDIER of the legion lay dying in Algiers, There was lack of woman's nursing, there was dearth of woman's tears; But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away, And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say: |