RUNIC VERSES.
O the force of Runic verses,
O the mighty strength of song
Cannot baffle all the curses
Which to mortal state belong.
Slaughter’d chiefs, that buried under
Heaps of marble, long have lain,
Song can rend your tomb asunder,
Give ye life and strength again.
When around his dying capture,
Fierce, the serpent draws his fold,
Song can make him, wild with rapture,
Straight uncoil, and bite the mould.
When from keep and battled tower,
Flames to heaven upward strain,
Song has o’er them greater power,
Than the vapours dropping rain.
It can quench the conflagration
Striding o’er the works of art;
But nor song nor incantation
Can appease love’s cruel smart.
O the force of Runic verses,
O the mighty strength of song
Cannot baffle all the curses
Which to mortal state belong.
THOUGHTS ON DEATH.
FROM THE SWEDISH OF C. LOHMAN.
Perhaps ’t is folly, but still I feel
My heart-strings quiver, my senses reel,
Thinking how like a fast stream we range
Nearer and nearer to yon dread change,
When soul and spirit filter away,
And leave nothing better than senseless clay.
Yield, beauty, yield; for the grave does gape,
And horribly alter’d reflects thy shape,—
For ah! think not those childish charms
Will rest unrifled in its cold arms,
And think not there, that the rose of love
Will bloom on thy features as here above.
Let him who roams at vanity fair,
In robes that rival the tulip’s glare,
Think on the chaplet of leaves which round
His fading forehead will soon be bound;
Think on each dirge the priests will say
When his cold corse is borne away.
Let him who seeketh for wealth uncheck’d
By fear of labour—let him reflect,
The gold he wins will brightly shine,
When he has perish’d with all his line.
Though man may rave and vainly boast,
We are but ashes when at the most.
BIRDS OF PASSAGE.
FROM THE SWEDISH.
So hot shines the sun upon Nile’s yellow stream,
That the palm-trees can save us no more from his beam;
Now comes the desire for home, in full force,
And Northward our phalanx bends swiftly its course.
Now dim underneath us, through distance we view
The green grassy earth, and the ocean’s deep blue;
There tempests and frequent disasters arise,
Whilst free and untroubled we wend through the skies.
Lo, high among mountains a meadow lies spread,
And there we alight, and get ready our bed;
There hatch we our eggs, and beneath the chill pole
We wait while the summer months over us roll.
No hunter, desirous to make us his prey,
Invades our lone valley by night or by day;
But green-mantled fairies their merry routs hold,
And fearless the pigmy [34] there hammers its gold.
But when pallid winter, again on the rocks
Shakes down in a shower the snow from his locks,
Then comes the desire for heat, in full force,
And Southward our phalanx bends swiftly its course.
To the verdant Savannah, and palm-shaded plain,
Where the Nile rolls his water, we hurry again;
There rest we till summer’s sun, waxing too hot,
Makes us wish for our native, our hill-girded spot.