With ever-shifting beauty. Then her breath, It is so like the gentle air of Spring,

As, from the morning's dewy flowers, it comes
Full of their fragrance, that it is a joy

To have it round us,-and her silver voice
Is the rich music of a summer bird,

Heard in the still night, with its passionate cadence.

BURIAL OF THE MINNISINK.

ON sunny slope and beechen swell,
The shadowed light of evening fell;
And, where the maple's leaf was brown,
With soft and silent lapse came down
The glory, that the wood receives,
At sunset, in its brazen leaves.

Far upward in the mellow light

Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white, Around a far uplifted cone,

In the warm blush of evening shone ;

An image of the silver lakes,

By which the Indian's soul awakes.

But soon a funeral hymn was heard Where the soft breath of evening stirred The tall, gray forest; and a band Of stern in heart, and strong in hand, Came winding down beside the wave, To lay the red chief in his grave.

They sang, that by his native bowers He stood in the last moon of flowers, And thirty snows had not yet shed Their glory on the warrior's head; But, as the summer fruit decays, So died he in those naked days.

A dark cloak of the roebuck's skin Covered the warrior, and within Its heavy folds the weapons, made For the hard toils of war, were laid; The cuirass, woven of plaited reeds, And the broad belt of shells and beads.

Before, a dark-haired virgin train
Chanted the death dirge of the slain;
Behind, the long procession came
Of hoary men and chiefs of fame,
With heavy hearts, and eyes of grief,
Leading the war-horse of their chief.

Stripped of his proud and martial dress, Uncurbed, unreined, and riderless,

With darting eye, and nostril spread,
And heavy and impatient tread,
He came; and oft that eye so proud

Asked for his rider in the crowd.

They buried the dark chief; they freed Beside the grave his battle steed; And swift an arrow cleaved its way To his stern heart! One piercing neigh Arose, and, on the dead man's plain, The rider grasps his steed again.

NOTES.

Page 21.-Walter Von der Vogelweide.

WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE, or Bird- Meadow, was one of the principal Minnesingers of the thirteenth century. He triumphed over Heinrich Von Ofterdingen in that poetic contest at the Wartburg Castle, known in literary history as the "War of Wartburg."

Page 47.-Like Imperial Charlemagne.

CHARLEMAGNE may be called by pre-eminence the monarch of farmers. According to the German tradition, in seasons of great abundance, his spirit crosses the Rhine, on a golden bridge, at Bingen, and blesses the cornfields and the vineyards. During his lifetime, he did not disdain, says Montesquieu, "To sell the eggs from the farm yards of his domains, and the superfluous vegetables of his gardens; while he distributed among his people the wealth of the Lombards and the immense treasures of the Huns."