The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 74, December, 1863

Even imperial Shakespeare drew
His Moor of Venice and the Jew,
And Romeo and Juliet,
And many a famous comedy."

After a longer pause, the Spanish Jew from Alieant begins "a story in the Talmud old," "The Legend of Rabbi Ben Levi." This is followed after the interlude by the Sicilian's tale, "King Robert of Sicily," a noble legend of the Church, whose moral is humility. It is told in a broad, stately measure, and with consummate simplicity and skill. The attention is not distracted for a moment from the story, which monks might tell in the still cloisters of a Sicilian convent, and every American child hear with interest and delight.

"And then the blue-eyed Norseman told.
A Saga of the days of old."

It is the Saga of King Olaf, and is much the longest tale in the volume, recounting the effort to plant Christianity in Norway by the sword of the King. In every variety of measure, heroic, elegiac, lyrical, the wild old Scandinavian tradition is told. Even readers who may be at first repelled by legends almost beyond modern human sympathy cannot escape the most musical persuasion of the poem which wafts them along those icy seas.

"And King Olaf heard the cry,
Saw the red light in the sky,
Laid his hand upon his sword,
As he leaned upon the railing,
And his ships went sailing, sailing
Northward into Drontheim fiord.

"Trained for either camp or court,
Skilful in each manly sport,
Young and beautiful and tall;
Art of warfare, craft of chases,
Swimming, stating, snow-shoe races,
Excellent alike at all."

There is no continuous thread of story in the Saga, but each fragment of the whole is complete in itself, a separate poem. The traditions are fierce and wild. The waves dash in them, the winds moan and shriek. There are evanescent glimpses of green meadows, and a swift gleam of summer; but the cold salt sea and winter close round all. The tides rise and fall; they eddy in the sand; they float off and afar the huge dragon-ships. But the queens pine for revenge and slaughter; the kings drink and swear and fight, and sail away to their doom.

"Louder the war-horses growl and snarl,
Sharper the dragons bite and sting!
Eric the son of Hakon Yarl
A death-drink salt as the sea
Pledges to thee,
Olaf the King!"

Whoever has heard Ole Bull play, or Jenny Lind sing, the weird minor melodies of the North, will comprehend the kind of spell which these legends weave around the mind. Nor is their character lost in the skilful and symmetrical rendering of Longfellow. The reader has not the feeling, as in Sir William Jones's translations, that he is reading Sir William, and not the Persian.

"'What was that?' said Olaf, standing
On the quarter-deck;
Something heard I like the stranding
Of a shattered wreck.'
Einar, then, the arrow taking
From the loosened string,
Answered, 'That was Norway breaking
From thy hand, O King!'"

But the battle which Thor had defied was not to end by the weapons of war. In the fierce sea-fight,

"There is told a wonderful tale,
How the King stripped off his mail,
Like leaves of the brown sea-kale,
As he swam beneath the main;

"But the young grew old and gray,
And never by night or day
In his kingdom of Norroway
Was King Olaf seen again."

The victory must be won by other weapons. In the convent of Drontheim, Astrid, the abbess, hears a voice in the darkness:—

"Cross against corslet,
Love against hatred.
Peace-cry for war-cry!"

The voice continues in peaceful music, forecasting heavenly rest:—

"As torrents in summer,
Half dried in their channels,
Suddenly rise, though the
Sky is still cloudless,
For rain has been falling
Far off at their fountains;

"So hearts that are fainting
Grow full to o'erflowing,
And they that behold it
Marvel, and know not
That God at their fountains
Far off has been raining."

With this exquisitely beautiful strain of the abbess the Saga ends.

The theologian muses aloud upon creeds and churches, then tells a fearful tragedy of Spain,—the story of a father who betrays his daughter to the fires of Torquemada. It chills the heart to think that such unspeakable ruin of a human soul was ever wrought by any system that even professed to be Christian. Moloch was truly divine, compared with the God of the Spanish Inquisition. But the gloom of the tragedy is not allowed to linger. The poet scatters it by the story of the merry "Birds of Killingworth," which appears elsewhere in the pages of this number of the "Atlantic." The blithe beauty of the verses is captivating, and the argument of the shy preceptor is the most poetic plea that ever wooed a world to justice. What an airy felicity in the lines,—

"'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents from shore to shore
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore."

And so, amid sunshine and the carolling of birds, the legendary rural romance of the Yankee shore, we turn the page, and find, with real sorrow, that the last tale is told in the Wayside Inn. The finale is brief. The guests arose and said good night. The drowsy squire remains to rake the embers of the fire. The scattered lamps gleam a moment at the windows. The Red Horse inn seems, in the misty night, the sinking constellation of the Bear,—and then,

"Far off the village-clock struck one."

So ends this ripe and mellow work, leaving the reader like one who listens still for pleasant music i' the air which sounds no more. Those who will may compare it with the rippling strangeness of "Hiawatha," the mournfully rolling cadence of "Evangeline," the mediæval romance of "The Golden Legend." For ourselves, its beauty does not clash with theirs. The simple old form of the group of guests telling stories, the thread of so many precious rosaries, has a new charm from this poem. The Tabard inn is gone; but who, henceforth, will ride through Sudbury town without seeing the purple light shining around the Red Horse tavern?

The volume closes with a few poems, classed as "Birds of Passage." It is the "second flight,"—the first being those at the end of the "Miles Standish" volume. Some of these have a pathos and interest which all will perceive, but the depth and tenderness of which not all can know. "The Children's Hour" is a strain of parental love, which haunts the memory with its melody, its sportive, affectionate, and yearning lay.

"They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his mouse-tower on the Rhine.