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, To the dismal knell ; Shadows are trailing, And tolling within Like a funeral bell. WALTER VON DER VOGELWEIDE. VOGELWEID, the Minnesinger, When he left this world of ours, Laid his body in the cloister, Under Würtzburg-Minster towers. And he gave the monks his treasures, They should feed the birds at noontide Saying "From these wandering minstrels I have learned the art of song; Let me now repay the lessons They have taught so well and long." Thus the bard of love departed And, fulfilling his desire, On his tomb the birds were feasted By the children of the choir. 45 Day by day, o'er tower and turret, In foul weather and in fair Day by day, in vaster numbers, On the tree, whose heavy branches On the pavement-on the tombstone- On the cross-bars of each window, They renewed the War of Wartburg, There they sang their merry carols, Till at length the portly abbot Murmured, "Why this waste of food? Be it changed to loaves henceforward For our fasting brotherhood." Then in vain o'er tower and turret, From the walls and woodland nests, 2G 2 When the Minster bells rang noontide, Gathered the unwelcome guests. Then in vain, with cries discordant, Clamorous round the Gothic spire, Screamed the feathered Minnesingers For the children of the choir! Time has long effaced the inscriptions On the cloister's funeral stones; And tradition only tells us Where repose the poet's bones. But around the vast Cathedral, |