In silence they reached over mountains and moor,
        To a heath where the oak-tree grew lonely and hoar: 
        “Now here let us place the grey stone of her cairn: 
        Why speak ye no word?” said Glenara the stern.

        “And tell me, I charge you, ye clan of my spouse,
        Why fold ye your mantles? why cloud ye your brows?”
        So spake the rude chieftain; no answer is made,
        But each mantle unfolding, a dagger displayed!

        “I dreamed of my lady, I dreamed of her shroud,”
        Cried a voice from the kinsmen all wrathful and loud;
        “And empty that shroud and that coffin did seem: 
        Glenara!  Glenara! now read me my dream!”

        Oh, pale grew the cheek of the chieftain, I ween,
        When the shroud was unclosed, and no body was seen! 
        Then a voice from the kinsmen spoke louder in scorn—­
        ’Twas the youth that had loved the fair Ellen of Lorn: 

        “I dreamed of my lady, I dreamed of her grief,
        I dreamed that her lord was a barbarous chief;
        On a rock of the ocean fair Ellen did seem:—­
        Glenara!  Glenara! now read me MY dream!”

        In dust low the traitor has knelt to the ground,
        And the desert revealed where his lady was found;
        From a rock of the ocean that beauty is borne;
        Now joy to the house of the fair Ellen of Lorn!

A FABLE FOR MUSICIANS.

BY CLARA DOTY BATES.

He grew as a red-headed thistle
Might grow, a mere vagabond weed—­
Little Frieder—­as gay with his whistle
As water-wagtail on a reed—­
Blithe that was indeed!

He had a little old fiddle,
A shabby and wonderful thing,
Patched at end, patched and glued in the middle
Oft lacking a key or a string,
But, oh, it could sing!

Barber’s ’prentice was Frieder, but having
No sense of the true barber’s art,
He cut every face in the shaving,
Pulled hair, and left gashes and smart,
Getting blows for his part.

Blows he liked not, and so off he started
One morning, his fortune to seek,
Comb and fiddle his all, yet light-hearted
As long as his fiddle could squeak,
Be it ever so weak.

Ran away!  Highway rutted or dusty
Seemed velvety grass to his feet;
Sang the birds; his own stout legs were trusty;
To his hunger a black crust was sweet,
And life seemed complete.

Towards twilight he came to a meadow
Where a lovely green water, outlaid
Like a looking-glass, held in clear shadow
Low iris-grown shores—­every blade
Its double had made.

Neck, the Nixie, lived under this water,
In a palace of glass, far below
Where fishes might swim, or the otter
Could dive, or a sunbeam could go,
Or a lily root grow.