When on its hinge of music opens

The gateway of the Pole, -
When Odin's warder leads the hero

To banquets never done,

And Freya's eyes outshine in summer
The ever-risen sun.

"On! on! the Northern lights are streaming In brightness like the morn,

And pealing far amid the vastness,

I hear the Gjallarhorn :

The heart of starry space is throbbing

With songs of minstrels old,

And now, on high Walhalla's portal,
Gleam Surtur's hoofs of gold!

"

THE VOICE OF THE FIRE.

HEY sat by the hearth-stone, broad and

bright,

Whose burning brands threw a cheerful light

On the frosty calm of the winter's night.

Her tresses soft to his lips were pressed,
Her head was laid on his happy breast,
And a tender silence their love expressed:

And ever a gentle murmur came

From the clear, bright heart of the wavering flame, Like the first sweet call of the dearest name.

He kissed on the warm, white brow,
And told her in fonder words, the vow
He had whispered under the moonlit bough;

And o'er them a steady radiance came
From the shining heart of the mounting flame,
Like the love that burneth forever the same.

The maiden smiled through her soft brown eyes,
As he led her forward to sunnier skies,
Whose cloudless light on the Future lies;

And a moment paused the laughing flame,
And it listened awhile, and then there came
A cheery burst from its sparkling frame.

In the home he pictured, the home so blest,
Their souls should sit in a calmer rest,
Like woodland birds in their shaded nest.

There slept, foreshadowed, the bliss to be,
When a tenderer life that home should see,
In the wingless cherub that climbed his knee.

And the flame went on with its flickering song, And beckoned and laughed to the lovers long, Who sat in its radiance, red and strong.

And ever its burden seemed to be
The mingled voices of household glee,
Like the gush of winds in a mountain tree.

Then broke and fell a glimmering brand
To the cold, dead ashes it fed and fanned,
And its last gleam waved like a warning hand.

They did not speak, for there came a fear,
As a spirit of evil were wandering near,
A menace of danger to something dear.

And, hovering over its smouldering bed,
A feebler pinion the flame outspread,
And a paler light through the chamber shed.

He clasped the maid in a fonder thrall:
"We shall love each other, whatever befall,
And the Merciful Father is over all."

A REQUIEM IN THE NORTH.

PEED swifter, Night!-wild Northern

Night,

Whose feet the Arctic islands know, When stiffening breakers, sharp and white,

Gird the complaining shores of snow! Send all thy winds to sweep the wold, And howl in mountain passes far, And hang thy banners, red and cold, Against the shield of every star!

For what have I to do with morn,

Or summer's glory in the vales, – With the blithe ring of forest-horn,

Or beckoning gleam of snowy sails? Art thou not gone, in whose blue eye

The fleeting summer dawned to me? Gone, like the echo of a sigh

Beside the loud, resounding sea!

O, brief that time of song and flowers,

Which blessed, through thee, the Northern Land!

I pine amid its leafless bowers,

And on the bleak and lonely strand. The forest wails the starry bloom

Which yet shall light its dusky floor, But down my spirit's paths of gloom Thy love shall blossom nevermore.

And nevermore shall battling pines
Their solemn triumph sound for me;
Nor morning gild the mountain lines,
Nor sunset flush the hoary sea;
But Night and Winter fill the sky,
And load with frost the shivering air,
Till every gust that hurries by
Repeats the voice of my despair.

The leaden twilight, cold and long,
Is slowly settling o'er the wave;
No wandering blast awakes a song
In naked boughs, above thy grave.
The frozen air is still and dark;

The numb earth lies in icy rest;
And all is dead save this one spark

Of burning grief, within my breast.

Life's darkened orb shall wheel no more
To Love's rejoicing summer back:
My spirit walks a wintry shore,

With not a star to cheer its track.
Speed swifter, Night! thy gloom and frost
Are free to spoil and ravage here;
This last wild requiem for the lost
I pour in thy unheeding ear!

THE CONTINENTS.

HAD a vision in that solemn hour,
Last of the year sublime,

Whose wave sweeps downward, with
its dying power
Rippling the shores of Time.

On the bleak margin of that hoary sea
My spirit stood alone,

Watching the gleams of phantom History,
Which through the darkness shone.

Then, when the bell of midnight ghostly hands
Tolled for the dead year's doom,
I saw the spirits of Earth's ancient lands
Stand up amid the gloom!

The crowned deities, whose reign began
In the forgotten Past,

When first the fresh world gave to sovereign Man
Her empires green and vast.

First queenly ASIA, from the fallen thrones
Of twice three thousand years,

Came with the woe a grieving goddess owns,
Who longs for mortal tears.

The dust of ruin to her mantle clung

And dimmed her crown of gold,

While the majestic sorrows of her tongue
From Tyre to Indus rolled :