What anvils rang, what hammers beat,
In what a forge and what a heat
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope!
Fear not each sudden sound and shock:
'Tis of the wave and not the rock;
'Tis but the flapping of the sail,
And not a rent made by the gale!
In spite of rock and tempest's roar,
In spite of false lights on the shore,
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea!
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee,
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears,
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears,

Are all with thee-are all with thee!

10

20

I.

A Farm in the Odenwald; a garden; morning; Prince Henry seated with a book. Elsie at a distance, gathering flowers.

Prince Henry. (Reading.) One morning, all alone,

Out of his convent of gray stone,

Into the forest older, darker, grayer,

His lips moving as if in prayer,
His head sunken upon his breast
As in a dream of rest,

Walked the Monk Felix. All about

The broad, sweet sunshine lay without,
Filling the summer air;

And within the woodlands as he trod,
The twilight was the Truce of God
With worldly woe and care;
Under him lay the golden moss;

And above him the boughs of hemlock-trees
Waved, and made the sign of the cross,
And whispered their Benedicites;
And from the ground

Rose an odour sweet and fragrant
Of the wild-flowers and the vagrant
Vines that wandered,

Seeking the sunshine, round and round.

These he heeded not, but pondered
On the volume in his hand;
A volume of Saint Augustine,
Wherein he read of the unseen
Splendours of God's great Town
In the unknown land,

And, with his eyes cast down
In humility, he said:

And lo! he heard

The sudden singing of a bird,

A snow-white bird, that from a cloud

Dropped down,

And among the branches brown

Sat singing

So sweet, and clear, and loud,

It seemed a thousand harp-strings ringing.
And the Monk Felix closed his book,
And long, long,

With rapturous look,

He listened to the song.

And hardly breathed or stirred,
Until he saw, as in a vision,

The land Elysian,

And in the heavenly city heard
Angelic feet

Fall on the golden flagging of the street.
And he would fain

Have caught the wondrous bird,

But strove in vain;

For it flew away, away,

Far over hill and dell,

And instead of its sweet singing,

He heard the convent bell

Suddenly in the silence ringing,
For the service of noonday.

And he retraced

80

Of this convent in the wood,

But for that space

Never have I beheld thy face!'

The heart of the Monk Felix fell:

And he answered, with submissive tone,

'This morning, after the hour of Prime,
I left my cell,

And wandered forth alone,
Listening all the time

To the melodious singing
Of a beautiful white bird,
Until I heard

The bells of the convent ring Noon from their noisy towers. 90 It was as if I dreamed;

For what to me had seemed
Moments only, had been hours!'

'Years!' said a voice close by.

It was an aged monk who spoke,
From a bench of oak
Fastened against the wall;-

He was the oldest monk of all.
For a whole century

Had he been there,

100 Serving God in prayer,

The meekest and humblest of His creatures.
He remembered well the features

Of Felix, and he said,

Speaking distinct and slow;

One hundred years ago,

When I was a novice in this place,

There was here a monk, full of God's grace, Who bore the name

Of Felix, and this man must be the same.'

110 And straightway

They brought forth to the light of day
A volume old and brown,

A huge tome, bound

In brass and wild-boar's hide,
Wherein were written down
The names of all who had died

In the convent, since it was edified.
And there they found,
Just as the old monk said,
120 That on a certain day and date,
One hundred years before,

Had gone forth from the convent gate
The Monk Felix, and never more
Had entered that sacred door.

He had been counted among the dead!—
And they knew, at last,

That, such had been the power

Of that celestial and immortal song,
A hundred years had passed,
130 And had not seemed so long
As a single hour!

II.

The Convent of Hirschau in the Black Forest. The Convent cellar. Friar Claus comes in with a light and a basket of empty flagons.

Friar Claus. I always enter this sacred place, With a thoughtful, solemn, and reverent pace, Pausing long enough on each stair

To breathe an ejaculatory prayer,

And a benediction on the vines

That produce these various sorts of wines!

For my part, I am well content

That we have got through with the tedious Lent! Fasting is all very well for those

Who have to contend with invisible foes;

But I am quite sure it does not agree

With a quiet peaceable man like me,

Who am not of that nervous and meagre kind
That are always distressed in body and mind.
And at times it really does me good

To come down among this brotherhood.
Dwelling for ever under ground,

Silent, contemplative, round and sound;
Each one old, and brown with mould,

But filled to the lips with the ardour of youth,
With the latent power and love of truth,
And with virtues fervent and manifold.

[I have heard it said, that at Easter-tide,
When buds are swelling on every side,
And the sap begins to move in the vine,
Then in all the cellars, far and wide,
The oldest, as well as the newest, wine
Begins to stir itself, and ferment,
With a kind of revolt and discontent
At being so long in darkness pent,
And fain would burst from its sombre tun
To bask on the hillside in the sun;
As in the bosom of us poor friars,
The tumult of half-subdued desires
For the world that we have left behind
Disturbs at times all peace of mind!]
And now that we have lived through Lent,
My duty it is, as often before,

To open awhile the prison-door,
And give these restless spirits vent.

Now here is a cask that stands alone,
And has stood a hundred years or more;
Its beard of cobwebs, long and hoar,
Trailing and sweeping along the floor,
Like Barbarossa, who sits in his cave,
Taciturn, sombre, sedate, and grave,
Till his beard has grown through the table of
stone!

It is of the quick and not of the dead!

In its veins the blood is hot and red,

And cost some hundred florins the ohm;
But that I do not consider dear,
When I remember that every year
Four butts are sent to the Pope of Rome.
And whenever a goblet thereof I drain,
The old rhyme keeps running in my brain,
At Bacharach on the Rhine,
At Hochheim on the Main,
And at Würzburg on the Stein,

Grow the three best kinds of wine!

They are all good wines, and better far
Than those of the Neckar, or those of Ahr.
In particular, Würzburg well may boast
Of its blessed wine of the Holy Ghost,
Which of all wines I like the most:
This I shall draw for the Abbot's drinking,
Who seems to be much of my way of thinking.
(Fills a flagon.)
[Ah! how the streamlet laughs and sings!
What a delicious fragrance springs
From the deep flagon, while it fills,
As of hyacinths and daffodils!
Between this cask and the Abbot's lips
Many have been the sips and slips;
Many have been the draughts of wine,
On their way to his, that have stopped at mine;
And many a time my soul has hankered
For a deep draught out of his silver tankard,
When it should have been busy with other
affairs,

Less with its longings and more with its

And I will begone, though I know full well
The cellar's a cheerfuller place than the cell.
Behold where he stands, all sound and good,
Brown and old in his oaken hood;
Silent he seems externally

As any Carthusian monk may be:
But within what a spirit of deep unrest!
What a seething and simmering in his breast,
As if the heaving of his great heart
Would burst his belt of oak apart!
Let me unloose this button of wood,
And quiet a little his turbulent mood.

(Sets it running.)

[See! how its currents gleam and shine,
As if they had caught the purple hues
Of autumn sunsets on the Rhine,
Descending and mingling with the dews:
Or as if the grapes were stained with the blood
Of the innocent boy, who some years back,
Was taken and crucified by the Jews,
In that ancient town of Bacharach!

Perdition upon those infidel Jews,
In that ancient town of Bacharach !
The beautiful town, that gives us wine
With the fragrant odour of Muscadine!]
I should deem it wrong to let this pass
Without first touching my lips to the glass,
For here in the midst of the current I stand,
Like the stone Pfalz in the midst of the river,
Taking toll upon either hand,

And much more grateful to the giver.

(He drinks.)

Here, now, is a very inferior kind
Such as in any town you may find,
Such as one might imagine would suit
The rascal who drank wine out of a boot;

This wine is as good as we can afford
To the friars, who sit at the lower board,
And cannot distinguish bad from good,
And are far better off than if they could,
Being rather the rude disciples of beer,
Than of anything more refined and dear!
(Fills the other flagons, and departs.)

Life may be given in many ways, And loyalty to Truth be sealed As bravely in the closet as the field, So bountiful is Fate;

But then to stand beside her, When craven churls deride her, To front a lie in arms and not to yield, This shows, methinks, God's plan And measure of a stalwart man, Limbed like the old heroic breeds, Who stand self-poised on manhood's solid earth;

Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, Fed from within with all the strength he needs.

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief,

Whom late the Nation he had led,
With ashes on her head,

Wept with the passion of an angry grief:
Forgive me, if from present things I turn
To speak what in my heart will beat and burn,
And hang my wreath on his world-honoured urn.

Nature, they say, doth dote,
And cannot make a man
Save on some worn-out plan,
Repeating us by rote:

For him her Old World moulds aside she threw,
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast
Of the unexhausted West,

With stuff untainted shaped a hero new,
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true.
How beautiful to see

Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed,
Who loved his charge, but never loved to lead;
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be,

Not lured by any cheat of birth,

But by his clear-grained human worth,
And brave old wisdom of sincerity!

They knew that outward grace is dust;
They could not choose but trust

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill,
And supple-tempered will

That bent like perfect steel to spring again and

thrust.

His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, A sea-mark now, now lost in vapours blind; Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest

stars.

Nothing of Europe here,

Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, Ere any names of Serf and Peer Could Nature's equal scheme deface; Here was a type of the true elder race,

And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face

to face.

I praise him not; it were too late; And some innative weakness there must be In him who condescends to victory

Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, Safe in himself as in a fate.

So always firmly he:

He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,

Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.

Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,

But at last silence comes;

These all are gone, and, standing like a

tower,

Our children shall behold his fame;

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,

New birth of our new soil, the first American.

[Not in anger, not in pride,
Pure from passion's mixture rude,
Ever to base earth allied;

But with far-heard gratitude,

Still with heart and voice renewed, To heroes living and dear martyrs dead, The strain should close that consecrates our

brave.

Lift the heart and lift the head!
Lofty be its mood and grave.
Not without a martial ring,
Not without a prouder tread
And a peal of exultation:
Little right has he to sing

Through whose heart in such an hour
Beats no march of conscious power,
Sweeps no tumult of elation!
'Tis no Man we celebrate,

By his country's victories great,

A hero half, and half the whim of Fate; But the pith and marrow of a Nation Drawing force from all her men, Highest, humblest, weakest, all, For her time of need, and then Pulsing it again through them, Till the basest can no longer cower, Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall,

Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem.

90

100

ΠΟ

120

130

Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her dower! 140
How could poet ever tower,

If his passions, hopes, and fears,
If his triumphs and his tears,
Kept not measure with his people?]