After this wondrous largess, and before

The unimagined pain,

Which, in Gethsemane, the Saviour bore
Within his heart and brain,-

He read, how these two acts of Love between,

Ere that prolific day was dim,

Christ and his Saints, like men with minds serene, Together sung a hymn.

These things he read in childly faith sincere,
Then paused and fixed his eye,

And said with kingly utte'rance-"I must hear
That Hymn before I die.

"I will send forth through sea and sun and snows,

To lands of every tongue,

To try if there be not some one which knows
The music Jesus sung.

"For I have found delight in songs profane
Trolled by a foolish boy,

And when the monks intone a pious strain,
My heart is strong in joy ;

"How blessed then to hear those harmonies, Which Christ's own voice divine engaged! 'Twould be as if a wind from Paradise

A wounded soul assuaged."

Within the Empe'ror's mind that anxious thought Lay travailing all night long,

He dreamed that Magi to his hand had brought The burthen of the Song;

And when to his grave offices he rose,
He kept his earnest will,

To offer untold guerdons unto those
Who should that dream fulfil.

But first he called to counsel in the hall
Wise priests of reve'rend name,

And with an open counte'nance to them all
Declared his hope and aim.

He said, "It is God's pleasure, that my will

Is made the natural law

Of many nations, so that out of ill
All good things I may draw.

"Therefore this holy mission I decree, Sparing no pains or cost,

That thus those sounds of dearest memory

Be not for ever lost."

They spake.

"Tradition streameth thro' our race,

Most like the gentle whistling air,

To which of old Elias veiled his face,

Conscious that God was there :

"Not in the storm, the earthquake, and the flame, That troubled Horeb's brow,

The splendour and the power of God then came, Nor thus he cometh now.

"The silent water filtereth through earth,
One day to bless the summer land;

The Word of God in Man slow bubbleth forth,
Touched by a worthy hand.

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Thus, in the memo'ry of some careful Jew

May lurk the record of a tune

Wont to be sung in ceremonial due

After the Paschal noon;

"And thy deep yearning for this mystic song

May give mankind at last

Some charm and blessing that has slept full long
The slumber of the Past."

The King rejoiced, and, at this high behest,
Men, to all toil and change inured,

Passed out to search the World if East or West
That legend still endured.

What good or ill those venturous hearts befell,
What glory or what shame,—

How far they wandered, I have not to tell;
Each has his sepa'rate fame.

I only know, that when the weight of hours
The prime of mortal heads had bowed,
He, slowly letting go his outward powers,
Spoke from his couch aloud :-

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:

"My soul has waited many a lingeʼring year

To taste that one delight,

And now I know at last that I shall hear

The hymn of Christ to-night.

"Look out, good friends! be prompt to welcome home,

Straight to my presence bring,

My messengers, who hither furnished come

The Song of Christ to sing."

Dark sank that night, but darker rose the morn,
That found the western earth

Of the divinest presence stripped and shorn
It ever woke to birth.

It seemed beyond the common lawful sway
Of Death and Nature o'er our kind,
That such a one as He should pass away,
And aught be left behind.

In Aachen Abbey's consecrated ground,

Within the hollowed stone,

They placed the imperial body, robed and crowned,
Seated as on a throne.

While the blest spirit holds communion free

With that eternal quire,

Of which on earth to trace the memory

Was his devout desire.*

* It is probable that the hymn sung on this occasion was the Hallèl, or part of it. The Hallèl is invariably chanted in all Jewish families on the two first evenings of the Passover, and consists of Psalms 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118, and is also read in the synagogue on every day of that feast.

THE NORTHERN KNIGHT IN ITALY.*

THIS is the record, true as his own word,

Of the adventures of a Christian knight,

Who, when beneath the foul Karasmian sword †
God's rescued city sunk to hopeless night,
Desired, before he gain'd his northern home,
To soothe his wounded heart at holy Rome.

And having found, in that reflected heaven,
More than Cæsarean splendors and delights,
So that it seemed to his young sense was given
An unimagined world of sounds and sights;—
Yet, half regretful of the long delay,

He joined some comrades on their common way.

The Spring was mantling that Italian land,
The Spring! the passion-season of our earth,
The joy, whose wings will never all expand,—
The gladsome travail of continuous birth,—
The force that leaves no creature unimbued
With amorous Nature's bland inquietude.

Though those hard sons of tumult and bold life,
Little as might be, own'd the tender power,
And only show'd their words and gestures rife
With the benign excitement of the hour,-
Yet one, the one of whom this tale is told,

In his deep soul was utterly controll'd.

*The story of Tannhäuser is now so well known through Mr. Julian Fane's and other Poems, that it is unnecessary to repeat the historical notice of former editions: "Der Tannhäuser und Ewige Jude" of Grüsse (Dresden, 1861) gives the whole cycle of the Legend.

At the conclusion of the last crusade.