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Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say,
"Peace!"

Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals The blast of War's great organ shakes the

skies!

But beautiful as songs of the immortals,

The holy melodies of love arise.

NUREMBERG.

In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad

meadow-lands

Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.

Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,

Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the em

perors, rough and bold,

Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;

And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,

That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.

In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,

Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;

On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days

Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.

Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous

world of Art :

Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;

And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,

By a former age commissioned as apostles to our

own.

In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,

And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;

In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,

Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through

the painted air.

Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple,

reverent heart,

Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;

Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,

Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.

Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies;

Dead he is not, but departed, for the artist

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never dies.

Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,

That he once has trod its pavement, that he

once has breathed its air!

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