To-day I give you but a song,
An old tradition of the North;
But first, to put you in the mood,
I will a little while prelude,
And from this instrument draw forth
Something by way of overture."

He played; at first the tones were pure
And tender as a summer night,
The full moon climbing to her height,
The sob and ripple of the seas,
The flapping of an idle sail;
And then by sudden and sharp degrees
The multiplied, wild harmonies
Freshened and burst into a gale;
A tempest howling through the dark,
A crash as of some shipwrecked bark,
A loud and melancholy wail.

Such was the prelude to the tale
Told by the Minstrel; and at times
He paused amid its varying rhymes,
And at each pause again broke in
The music of his violin,

With tones of sweetness or of fear,
Movements of trouble or of calm,
Creating their own atmosphere;
As sitting in a church we hear
Between the verses of the psalm
The organ playing soft and clear,
Or thundering on the startled ear.

And one was spinning a sailor's yarn
About Klaboterman,

The Kobold of the sea; a spright
Invisible to mortal sight,

Who o'er the rigging ran.

Sometimes he hammered in the hold, Sometimes upon the mast,

Sometimes abeam, sometimes abaft, Or at the bows he sang and laughed, And made all tight and fast.

He helped the sailors at their work,
And toiled with jovial din;
He helped them hoist and reef the sails,
He helped them stow the casks and
bales,

And heave the anchor in.

But woe unto the lazy louts,

The idlers of the crew; Them to torment was his delight, And worry them by day and night, And pinch them black and blue.

And woe to him whose mortal eyes
Klaboterman behold.

It is a certain sign of death!
The cabin-boy here held his breath,
He felt his blood run cold.

II.

THE jolly skipper paused awhile, And then again began; "There is a Spectre Ship," quoth he, "A ship of the Dead that sails the sea, And is called the Carmilhan.

"A ghostly ship, with a ghostly crew, In tempests she appears;

And before the gale, or against the gale, She sails without a rag of sail,

Without a helmsman steers.

"She haunts the Atlantic north and south,

But mostly the mid-sea, Where three great rocks rise bleak and bare

Like furnace-chimneys in the air,

And are called the Chimneys Three.

Over her decks the seas will leap, She must go down into the deep, And perish mouse and man.' The captain of the Valdemar Laughed loud with merry heart. "I should like to see this ship," said he;

"I should like to find these Chimneys Three,

That are marked down in the chart.

"I have sailed right over the spot," he said,

"With a good stiff breeze behind, When the sea was blue, and the sky was clear,

You can follow my course by these pinholes here,

And never a rock could find."

And then he swore a dreadful oath,

He swore by the Kingdoms Three, That, should he meet the Carmilhan, He would run her down, although he ran Right into Eternity!

All this, while passing to and fro,

The cabin-boy had heard;
He lingered at the door to hear,
And drank in all with greedy ear,
And pondered every word.

He was a simple country lad,

But of a roving mind.

"O, it must be like heaven," thought he,

"Those far-off foreign lands to see,

And fortune seek and find!"

But in the fo'castle, when he heard
The mariners blaspheme,

He thought of home, he thought of God, And his mother under the churchyard sod,

And wished it were a dream.

One friend on board that ship had he;
"T was the Klaboterman,
Who saw the Bible in his chest,
And made a sign upon his breast,
All evil things to ban.

III.

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, It is the wind; it freshens fast, "That swings the vessel so; 'Tis time to say farewell at last, 'Tis 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.

Through Kattegat and Skager-rack
She flitteth like a ghost;
By day and night, by night and day,
She bounds, she flies upon her way
Along the English coast.

black;

The clouds were everywhere; There was a feeling of suspense In nature, a mysterious sense Of terror in the air.

And all on board the Valdemar
Was still as still could be;
Save when the dismal ship-bell tolled,
As ever and anon she rolled,

And lurched into the sea.

The captain up and down the deck
Went striding to and fro;
Now watched the compass at the wheel,
Now lifted up his hand to feel

Which way the wind might blow.
And now he looked up at the sails,
And now upon the deep;
In every fibre of his frame
He felt the storm before it came,
He had no thought of sleep.

Eight bells and suddenly abaft,
With a great rush of rain,
Making the ocean white with spume,
In darkness like the day of doom,
On came the hurricane.

There rose up from the sea,
As from a foundered ship of stone,
Three bare and splintered masts alone :
They were the Chimneys Three.

And onward dashed, the Valdemar
And leaped into the dark;
A denser mist, a colder blast,
A little shudder, and she had passed
Right through the Phantom Bark.

She cleft in twain the shadowy hulk,
But cleft it unaware;

As when, careering to her nest,
The sea-gull severs with her breast
The unresisting air.

Then suddenly there came a shock,
And louder than wind or sea
A cry burst from the crew on deck,
As she dashed and crashed, a hopeless
wreck,

Upon the Chimneys Three.

The storm and night were passed, the light

To streak the east began;
The cabin-boy, picked up at sea,
Survived the wreck, and only he,
To tell of the Carmilhan.

INTERLUDE.

WHEN the long murmur of applause
That greeted the Musician's lay
Had slowly buzzed itself away,
And the long talk of Spectre Ships
That followed died upon their lips
And came unto a natural pause,
"These tales you tell are one and all
Of the Old World," the Poet said,
"Flowers gathered from a crumbling
wall,

Dead leaves that rustle as they fall;
Let me present you in their stead
Something of our New England earth,
A tale which, though of no great worth,
Has still this merit, that it yields
A certain freshness of the fields,
A sweetness as of home-made bread."

The Student answered: "Be discreet;
For if the flour be fresh and sound,
And if the bread be light and sweet,
Who careth in what mill 't was ground,
Or of what oven felt the heat,
Unless, as old Cervantes said,
You are looking after better bread
Than any that is made of wheat?
You know that people nowadays
To what is old give little praise;
All must be new in prose and verse:
They want hot bread, or something

worse,

Fresh every morning, and half baked;
The wholesome bread of yesterday,
Too stale for them, is thrown away,
Nor is their thirst with water slaked,"

As oft we see the sky in May Threaten to rain, and yet not rain, The Poet's face, before so gay,

green,

Drive his new Flying Stage-coach, four in hand,

Down the long lane, and out into the land,

And knew that he was far upon the way To Ipswich and to Boston on the Bay!

Just then the meditations of the Earl
Were interrupted by a little girl,
Barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair,
Eyes full of laughter, neck and shoulders
bare,

A thin slip of a girl, like a new moon,
Sure to be rounded into beauty soon,
A creature men would worship and adore,
Though now in mean habiliments she

bore

A pail of water, dripping, through the street,

And bathing, as she went, her naked feet.

It was a pretty picture, full of grace, The slender form, the delicate, thin face;

The swaying motion, as she hurried by ; | The shining feet, the laughter in her eye, That o'er her face in ripples gleamed and glanced,

As in her pail the shifting sunbeam danced:

And with uncommon feelings of delight The Earl of Halifax beheld the sight. Not so Dame Stavers, for he heard her say

These words, or thought he did, as plain as day:

"O Martha Hilton! Fie! how dare you go

About the town half dressed, and looking so!"

At which the gypsy laughed, and straight

replied:

"No matter how I look; I yet shall ride In my own chariot, ma'am." And on

Fair Mistress Stavers courtesied low and

The

sunsets flushed its western windows red;

fast;

snow was on its roofs, the wind, the rain ;

Its

woodlands were in leaf and bare again;

For this was Governor Wentworth, driving down

To Little Harbor, just beyond the town, Where his Great House stood looking out to sea,

A goodly place, where it was good to be.

It was a pleasant mansion, an abode Near and yet hidden from the great highroad,

Moons waxed and waned, the lilacs bloomed and died,

In the broad river ebbed and flowed the tide,

Ships went to sea, and ships came home from sea,

And the slow years sailed by and ceased to be.