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'Champs Elysées,' and in his conversation exhibited a heartiness and indulgence towards others, almost foreign to his sarcastic nature, the identity of which, however, is prominent in his compositions to the last. There, indeed, the terrible yearning for death almost supersedes other feelings. He had long ago drawn a picture of the old age he aspired to attain,-age retaining the virtues of youth, its unselfish zeal, its unselfish tears. • Let 'me become an old man, still loving youth, still, in spite of the 'feebleness of years, sharing in its gambols and in its dangers; 'let my voice tremble and weaken as it may, while the sense of the words it utters remains fresh with hope, and unpalsied by 'fear.' Piteously different was this life from the event, from the reality which found its true expression in the following apologue, and in the poems which we have selected as the best illustration of the power of genius to draw up treasure from the deepest abysses of human calamity.

'I will cite you a passage from the Chronicle of Limburg. This chronicle is very interesting for those who desire information about the manners and customs of the middle ages in Germany. It describes, like a Journal des Modes, the costumes both of men and women as they came out at the time. It gives also notices of the songs which were piped and sung about each year, and the first lines of many a love-ditty of the day are there preserved. Thus, in speaking of A. D. 1480, it mentions that in that year through the whole of Germany songs were piped and sung, sweeter and lovelier than all the measures hitherto known in German lands, and that young and old—especially the ladies—went so mad about them, that they were heard to sing them from morning to night. Now these songs, the chronicle goes on to say, were written by a young clerk, who was affected by leprosy, and who dwelt in a secret hermitage apart from all the world. You know, dear reader, assuredly what an awful malady in the middle ages this leprosy was; and how the poor creatures who fell under this incurable calamity were driven out of all civil society, and allowed to come near no human being. Deadalive, they wandered forth wrapt up from head to foot, the hood drawn over the face, and carrying in the hand a kind of rattle called the Lazarus-clapper, by which they announced their presence, so that every one might get out of their way in time. This poor clerk, of whose fame as poet and songster this Chronicle of Limburg has spoken, was just such a leper, and he sat desolate, in the solitude of his sorrow, while all Germany, joyful and jubilant, sang and piped

his songs.

'Many a time in the mournful visions of my nights, I think I see before me the poor clerk of the Chronicle of Limburg, my brother in Apollo, and his sad, suffering eyes stare strangely at me from under his hood; but at the same moment he seems to vanish, and clanging through the distance, like the echo of a dream, I hear the sharp rattle of the Lazarus-clapper.'

And, as it were in the person of this unhappy being, he entitles the following series of poems

LAZARUS.

1.

My one love is the Dark Ladie;
O she has loved me long and well:
Her tears, when last she wept o'er me,
Turned my hair grey, where'er they fell.
'She kissed my eyes, and all was black,
Embraced my knees, and both were lame,
Clung to my neck, and from my
back
The marrow to her kisses came.
'My body is a carcass, where

The spirit suffers prison-bound:
Sometimes it tosses in despair,

And rages like a crazy hound.
'Unmeaning curses! oath on oath
Cannot destroy a single fly:

Bear what God sends you nothing loth

To pray for better by and by.'

2.

'Old Time is lame and halt,

The snail can barely crawl:
But how should I find fault,
Who cannot move at all?
'No gleam of cheerful sun!
No hope my life to save!
I have two rooms, the one
I die in and the grave.
'May be, I've long been dead,
May be, a giddy train
Of phantoms fills my head,

And haunts what was my brain.

'These dear old Gods or devils,
Who see me stiff and dull,
May like to dance their revels
In a dead Poet's skull.
'Their rage of weird delight
Is luscious pain to me:
And, my bony fingers write
What daylight must not see.'

3.

'What lovely blossoms on each side

Of my youth's journey shone neglected;

Left by my indolence or pride

To waste unheeded or respected!

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'You were a fair young lady, with an air

Gentle, refined, discreet and debonnaire ;

I watched, and watched in vain, to see when first

The passion-flower from your young heart would burst:

'Burst into consciousness of loftier things
Than reason reckons or reflection brings,—
Things that the prosy world lets run to seed,
But for which women weep and brave men bleed.
'Can you remember when we strolled together,
Through the Rhine vineyards, in gay summer weather?
Outlaughed the sun, and every genial flower
Shared the serene emotion of the hour.

In many a hue the roses blushed to please,
The thick carnations kissed the morning breeze;
The very daisies' unpretending show,
Seemed into rich ideal life to blow.

'While you in quiet grace walked by my side,
Dressed in white satin, that might suit a bride,
But like some little maid of Netscher's limning,
Your untried heart well hid beneath the trimming.'

6.

'My cause at Reason's bar was heard, —
"Your fame is clear as noon-day's sun-
The sentence ran, "by deed or word

The fair accused no ill has done."
"Yes! while my soul was passion-torn,
She dumb and motionless stood by ;
She did not scoff, she did not scorn,
Yet "guilty, guilty," still I cry.
For an accusing Voice is heard,
When night is still and thought is dim,

Saying, "It was not deed or word,

"But her bad heart, that ruined him.”

Then come the witnesses and proofs,
And documents of priceless cost;

But when the dawn has touched the roofs,
All vanish, and my cause is lost :
And in my being's darkest deep

The plaintiff seeks the shame to hide :
One sense-one memory-will not sleep-
That I am utterly destroyed!'

7.

'My fathomless despair to show

By certain signs, your letter came:
A lightning-flash, whose sudden flame
Lit up the abyss that yawned below.
What! you by sympathies controlled!
You, who in all my life's confusion,
Stood by me, in your self-seclusion,
As fair as marble, and as cold.

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'O God! how wretched I must be! When even she begins to speak;

When tears run down that icy cheek, The very stones can pity me.

'There's something shocks me in her woe: But, if that rigid heart is rent,

May not the Omnipotent relent, And let this poor existence go.'

8.

'The Sphynx was all a Woman: proof
I cannot give you, but I know it;
The lion's body, tail, and hoof,

Are but the nonsense of the poet.

'And this real Sphynx, to madden us,
Goes on propounding her enigma,
Just as she tortured Edipus

With all his sad domestic stigma.
'How fortunate she does not know
Herself her secret's mystic thunder!
If once she spoke the word, the blow
Would split the world itself asunder.'

9.

'Three hags on a seat

Where the cross-roads meet!

They mumble and grin,

They sigh and they spin:

Great ladies they be,

Though frightful to see.

'One moistens the thread

In her pendulous mouth,

And the distaff is fed

Though her lip has the drought.

'One dances the spindle

In fanciful ways,

Till the sparks from it kindle

Her eyes to a blaze.

"The third holds the shears

The discussion to close :

While with voice hard and dreary

She sings "Miserere,"

And the rheum of her tears

Makes warts on her nose.

'Sweet Fate! prithee answer
My love with your knife;
And cut out this cancer
Of damnable life.'

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