Drove o'er the sea-that desert desolate- They lived in narrow streets and lanes obscure, All their lives long, with the unleavened bread And bitter herbs of exile and its fears, The wasting famine of the heart they fed, And slaked its thirst with marah of their tears. Anathema maranatha ! was the cry That rang from town to town, from street to street; At every gate the accursed Mordecai Was mocked and jeered, and spurned by Christian feet. Pride and humiliation hand in hand Walked with them through the world where'er they went ; Trampled and beaten were they as the sand, And yet unshaken as the continent. For in the background figures vague and vast Of patriarchs and of prophets rose sublime, And all the great traditions of the Past They saw reflected in the coming time. And thus for ever with reverted look The mystic volume of the world they read, Spelling it backward, like a Hebrew book, Till life became a Legend of the Dead. But ah! what once has been shall be no more! OLIVER BASSELIN. N the Valley of the Vire Still is seen an ancient mill, With its gables quaint and queer, And beneath the window-sill, On the stone, These words alone : "Oliver Basselin lived here." Far above it, on the steep, Ruined stands the old Château ; Nothing but the donjon-keep Left for shelter or for show. Its vacant eyes Stare at the skies, Stare at the valley green and deep. Once a convent, old and brown, Looked, but ah ! it looks no more, From the neighbouring hillside down On the rushing and the roar Of the stream Whose sunny gleam Cheers the little Norman town. In that darksome mill of stone, That ancient mill With a splendour of its own. Never feeling of unrest Broke the pleasant dream he dreamed; Only made to be his nest, All the lovely valley seemed; No desire Of soaring higher Stirred or fluttered in his breast. True, his songs were not divine; Were not songs of that high art, Which, as winds do in the pine, Of this green earth Laughed and revelled in his line. From the alehouse and the inn, That in those days Sang the poet Basselin. In the castle, cased in steel, Knights, who fought at Agincourt, Watched and waited, spur on heel; But the poet sang for sport Songs that rang Another clang, Songs that lowlier hearts could feel. In the convent, clad in grey, Sat the monks in lonely cells, |