I hear two bells so softly singing:
How sweet their silver voices roll!
The one on yonder hill is ringing,
The other peals within my soul.
I hear two maidens gently talking,
Bohemian maidens fair to see;
The one on yonder hill is walking,
The other maiden—where is she?
Where is she?—when the moonlight glistens
O'er silent lake or murm'ring stream,
I hear her call my soul which listens:
'Oh! wake no more—come, love, and dream!'
She came to earth-earth's loveliest creature;
She died—and then was born once more;
Changed was her race, and changed each feature,
But oh! I loved her as before.
We live—but still, when night has bound us
In golden dreams too sweet to last,
A wondrous light-blue world around us,
She comes, the loved one of the Past.
I know not which I love the dearest,
For both my loves are still the same;
The living to my heart is nearest,
The dead love feeds the living flame.
And when the moon, its rose-wine quaffing
Which flows across the Eastern deep,
Awakes us, Klarà chides me laughing,
And says, 'We love too well in sleep!'
And though no more a Vojvod's daughter,
As when she lived on Earth before,
The love is still the same which sought her,
And she is true—what would you more?
Bright moonbeams on the sea are playing,
And starlight shines o'er vale and hill;
I should be gone—yet still delaying,
By thy loved side I linger still!
My gold is gone—my hopes have perished,
And nought remains save love for thee!
E'en that must fade, though once so cherished:
Farewell!—and think no more of me!
'Though gold be gone and hope departed,
And nought remain save love for me,
Thou ne'er shalt leave me broken-hearted,
For I will share my life with thee!
'Thou deem'st me but a wanton maiden,
The plaything of thy idle hours;
But laughing streams with gold are laden,
And sweets are hidden 'neath the flowers.
'E'en outcasts may have heart and feeling,
E'en such as I be fond and true;
And love, like light, in dungeons stealing,
Though bars be there, will still burst through.'
PICTURES FROM THE NORTH.
It is worth while to live in the city, that we may learn to love the country; and it is not bad for many, that artificial life binds them with bonds of silk or lace or rags or cobwebs, since, when they are rent away, the Real gleams out in a beauty and with a zest which had not been save for contrast.
Contrast is the salt of the beautiful. I wonder that the ancients, who came so near it in so many ways, never made a goddess of Contrast. They had something like it in ever-varying Future—something like it in double-faced Janus, who was their real 'Angel of the Odd.' Perhaps it is my ignorance which is at fault—if so, I pray you correct me. The subtle Neo-Platonists must have apotheosized such a savor to all æsthetic bliss. Mostly do I feel its charm when there come before me pictures true to life of far lands and lives, of valley and river, sea and shore. Then I forget the narrow office and the shop-lined street, the rattling cars and hurried hotel-lodgment, and think what it would be if nature, in all her freshness and never-ending contrasts, could be my ever-present.
I thought this yesterday, in glancing over an old manuscript in my drawer, containing translations, by some hand to me unknown, of sketches of Sweden by the fairy-story teller Hans Christian Andersen. Reader, will they strike you as pleasantly as they did me? I know not. Let us glance them over. They have at least the full flavor of the North, of the healthy land of frost and pines, of fragrant birch and of sweeter meadow-grass, and simpler, holier flowers than the rich South ever showed, even in her simplest moods.