Stranger! no stone might dare to tell
His name, who on this red spot fell.

These steps are steps of German men,
Who, when the tyrant's in his den,
Come nightly here, with solemn tread,
To vow their vengeance o'er the dead.
Dead! - No! that spirit's lightening still!
Stranger! thou seest the grave of Schill!

George Croly.

AT

THE GOOD SHIP VALDEMAR.

T Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea,
Within the sandy bar,

At sunset of a summer's day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
The good ship Valdemar.

The sunbeams danced upon the waves,
And played along her side;

And through the cabin windows streamed

In ripples of golden light, that seemed
The ripple of the tide.

There sat the captain with his friends,
Old skippers brown and hale,

Who smoked and grumbled o'er their grog,

And talked of iceberg and of fog,

Of calm and storm and gale.

The cabin windows have grown blank
As eyeballs of the dead;

No more the glancing sunbeams burn
On the gilt letters of the stern,
But on the figure-head;

On Valdemar victorious,

Who looketh with disdain
To see his image in the tide
Dismembered float from side to side,
And reunite again.

"It is the wind," those skippers said,
"That swings the vessel so;

It is the wind; it freshens fast,
"T is time to say farewell at last,
"T is time for us to go."

They shook the captain by the hand,
"Good luck! good luck!" they cried;

Each face was like the setting sun,
As, broad and red, they one by one
Went o'er the vessel's side.

The sun went down, the full moon rose, Serene o'er field and flood;

And all the winding creeks and bays And broad sea-meadows seemed ablaze, The sky was red as blood.

The southwest wind blew fresh and fair, As fair as wind could be;

Bound for Odessa, o'er the bar,
With all sail set, the Valdemar
Went proudly out to sea.

The lovely moon climbs up the sky
As one who walks in dreams;
A tower of marble in her light,
A wall of black, a wall of white,
The stately vessel seems.

Low down upon the sandy coast
The lights begin to burn;
And now, uplifted high in air,
They kindle with a fiercer glare,
And now drop far astern.

The dawn appears, the land is gone,

The sea is all around;

Then on each hand low hills of sand
Emerge and form another land;

She steereth through the Sound.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Strasburg.

TAULER.

AULER, the preacher, walked, one autumn day, Without the walls of Strasburg, by the Rhine,

Pondering the solemn Miracle of Life;

As one who, wandering in a starless night,
Feels, momently, the jar of unseen waves,
And hears the thunder of an unknown sea,
Breaking along an unimagined shore.

And as he walked he prayed. Even the same
Old prayer with which, for half a score of years,
Morning and noon and evening, lip and heart
Had groaned: "Have pity upon me, Lord!
Thou seest, while teaching others, I am blind.
Send me a man who can direct my steps!"

Then, as he mused, he heard along his path
A sound as of an old man's staff among
The dry, dead linden-leaves; and, looking up,
He saw a stranger, weak and poor and old.

"Peace be unto thee, father!" Tauler said, "God give thee a good day!" The old man raised Slowly his calm blue eyes. "I thank thee, son; But all my days are good, and none are ill."

Wondering thereat, the preacher spake again, "God give thee happy life." The old man smiled, I never am unhappy.”

66

Tauler laid

His hand upon the stranger's coarse gray sleeve: "Tell me, O father, what thy strange words mean. Surely man's days are evil, and his life

Sad as the grave it leads to." "Nay, my son,

Our times are in God's hands, and all our days
Are as our needs: for shadow as for sun,

For cold as heat, for want as wealth, alike

Our thanks are due, since that is best which is;
And that which is not, sharing not his life,
Is evil only as devoid of good.

And for the happiness of which I spake
I find in it submission to his will,

And calm trust in the holy Trinity

Of Knowledge, Goodness, and Almighty Power."

Silently wondering, for a little space,

Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one
Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought
Which long has followed, whispering through the dark
Strange terrors, drag it, shrieking, into light:

'What if God's will consign thee hence to Hell ? "

66

"Then," said the stranger, cheerily, "be it so.
What Hell may be I know not; this I know,
I cannot lose the presence of the Lord:
One arm, Humility, takes hold upon
His dear Humanity; the other, Love,
Clasps his Divinity. So where I go

He goes; and better fire-walled Hell with Him
Than golden-gated Paradise without."

Tears sprang in Tauler's eyes.

A sudden light,

Like the first ray which fell on chaos, clove
Apart the shadow wherein he had walked

Darkly at noon. And, as the strange old man