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AFTERNOON IN FEBRUARY.

THE day is ending,
The night is descending;

The marsh is frozen,

The river dead.

Through clouds like ashes,

The red sun flashes

On village windows

That glimmer red.

The snow recommences;

The buried fences

Mark no longer

The road o'er the plain;

While through the meadows,

Like fearful shadows,

Slowly passes

A funeral train.

The bell is pealing,

And every feeling
Within me responds

To the dismal knell ;

Shadows are trailing,

My heart is bewailing

And tolling within

Like a funeral bell.

TO AN OLD DANISH SONG-BOOK.

WELCOME, my old friend,

Welcome to a foreign fireside,

While the sullen gales of autumn

Shake the windows.

The ungrateful world

Has, it seems, dealt harshly with thee,

Since, beneath the skies of Denmark, First I met thee.

There are marks of age,

There are thumb-marks on thy margin,

Made by hands that clasped thee rudely,

At the alehouse.

Soiled and dull thou art;

Yellow are thy time-worn pages,

As the russet, rain-molested

Leaves of autumn.

Thou art stained with wine

Scattered from hilarious goblets,

As these leaves with the libations

Of Olympus.

Yet dost thou recall

Days departed, half-forgotten,

When in dreamy youth I wandered

By the Baltic,

When I paused to hear

The old ballad of King Christian

Shouted from suburban taverns

In the twilight.

Thou recallest bards,

Who, in solitary chambers,

And with hearts by passion wasted,

Wrote thy pages.

Thou recallest homes

Where thy songs of love and friendship

Made the gloomy Northern winter

Bright as summer.

Once some ancient Scald,

In his bleak, ancestral Iceland,

Chanted staves of these old ballads

To the Vikings.

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