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A CHRISTMAS CAROL.43

FROM THE NOEI BOURGUIGNON DE GUI BARÔZAI.

I HEAR along our street Pass the minstrel throngs; Hark! they play so sweet, On their hautboys, Christmas songs! Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

In December ring

Every day the chimes;

Loud the gleemen sing

In the streets their merry rhymes.
Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

Shepherds at the grange, Where the Babe was born, Sang, with many a change, Christmas carols until morn. Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

These good people sang

Songs devout and sweet;

While the rafters rang,

There they stood with freezing feet. Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

Nuns in frigid cells

At this holy tide,

For want of something else,

Christmas songs at times have tried. Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

Washerwomen old,

To the sound they beat,

Sing by rivers cold,

With uncovered heads and feet.

Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

Who by the fireside stands
Stamps his feet and sings;
But he who blows his hands

Not so gay a carol brings.

Let us by the fire

Ever higher

Sing them till the night expire!

COPLAS DE MANRIQUE.

FROM THE SPANISH.

[Don Jorge Manrique, the author of the following poem, flourished in the last half of the fifteenth century. He followed the profession of arms, and died on the field of battle. Mariana, in his History of Spain, makes honourable mention of him, as being present at the siege of Uclés; and speaks of him as "a youth of estimable qualities, who in this war gave brilliant proofs of his valour. He died young, and was thus cut off from long exercising his great virtues, and exhibiting to the world the light of his genius, which was already known to fame." He was mortally wounded in a skirmish near Cañavete, in the year 1479.

The name of Rodrigo Manrique, the father of the poet, Conde de Paredes and Maestre de Santiago, is well known in Spanish history and song. He died in 1476; according to Mariana, in the town of Uclés; but according to the poem of his son, in Ocaña. It was his death that called forth the poem upon which rests the literary reputation of the younger Manrique. In the language of his historian, "Don Jorge Manrique, in an elegant ode, full of poetic beauties, rich embellishments of genius, and high moral reflections, mourned the death of his father as with a funeral hymn." This praise is not exaggerated. The poem is a model in its kind. Its conception is solemn and beautiful; and, in accordance with it, the style moves on, calm, dignified, and majestic.]

Он, let the soul her slumbers break,
Let thought be quickened, and awake;
Awake to see

How soon this life is past and gone,
And death comes softly stealing on,
How silently!

Swiftly our pleasures glide away,

Our hearts recall the distant day
With many sighs;,

The moments that are speeding fast

We heed not, but the past,—the past,— More highly prize.

Onward its course the present keeps,
Onward the constant current sweeps,
Till life is done;

And, did we judge of time aright,
The past and future in their flight
Would be as one.

Let no one fondly dream again,
That Hope and all her shadowy train
Will not decay;

Fleeting as were the dreams of old,

Remembered like a tale that's told,

They pass away.

Our lives are rivers, gliding free
To that unfathomed, boundless sea,
The silent grave!

Thither all earthly pomp and boast
Roll, to be swallowed up and lost
In one dark wave.

Thither the mighty torrents stray,
Thither the brook pursues its way,
And tinkling rill.

There all are equal. Side by side

The poor man and the son of pride
Lie calm and still.

I will not here invoke the throng

Of orators and sons of

The deathless few ;

song,

Fiction entices and deceives,

And sprinkled o'er her fragrant leaves

Lies poisonous dew.

To One alone my thoughts arise,

The Eternal Truth,-the Good and Wise,——

To Him I cry,

Who shared on earth our common lot,

But the world comprehended not

His deity.

This world is but the rugged road
Which leads us to the bright abode

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So let us choose that narrow way,
Which leads no traveller's foot astray
From realms of love.

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