ur hope to be found,
Making, like magic elixir, our poor weak heads to swim round,
And giving us heart for the struggle till night makes end of the pain.

Athwart the hurricane--athwart the snow and the sleet,
Afar there twinkles over the black earth's waste,
The light of the Scriptural inn where the weary and the faint may
taste
The sweets of welcome, the plenteous feast and the secure retreat.

It is an angel, in whose soothing palms
Are held the boon of sleep and dreamy balms,
Who makes a bed for poor unclothed men;
It is the pride of the gods--the all-mysterious room,
The pauper's purse--this fatherland of gloom,
The open gate to heaven, and heavens beyond our ken.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

[Illustration: _Copyright 1895, by the Photographische Gesellschaft_]
_MUSIC_. Photogravure from a Painting by J.M. Strudwick.

MUSIC

Sweet music sweeps me like the sea
Toward my pale star,
Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free
I sail afar.
With front outspread and swelling breasts,
On swifter sail
I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests
Under night's veil.
Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash
A bark in distress:
By the blast I am lulled--by the tempest's wild crash
On the salt wilderness.
Then comes the dead calm--mirrored there
I behold my despair.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

THE BROKEN BELL

Bitter and sweet, when wintry evenings fall
Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear
Old memory's notes sway softly far and near,
While ring the chimes across the gray fog's pall.

Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent,
Still calls afar its old and pious song,
Responding faithfully in accents strong,
Like some old sentinel before his tent.

I too--my soul is shattered;--when at times
It would beguile the wintry nights with rhymes
Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems
Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves
Beside the blood-pools--'neath the human sheaves
Gasping in anguish toward their fixed dreams.

Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'

The two poems following