whether I, or you, or another man did such a deed, or wrote such a book, sobeit the deed and book were well done!  It is the part of an indiscreet and troublesome ambition, to care too much about fame,—­about what the world says of us.  To be always looking into the faces of others for approval;—­to be always anxious for the effect of what we do and say; to be always shouting to hear the echo of our own voices!  If you look about you, you will see men, who are wearing life away in feverish anxiety of fame, and the last we shall ever hear of them will be the funeral bell, that tolls them to their early graves!  Unhappy men, and unsuccessful! because their purpose is, not to accomplish well their task, but to clutch the `trick and fantasy of fame’; and they go to their graveswith purposes unaccomplished and wishes unfulfilled.  Better for them, and for the world in their example, had they known how to wait!  Believe me, the talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do well; and doing well whatever you do,—­without a thought of fame.  If it come at all, it will come because it is deserved, not because it is sought after.  And, moreover, there will be no misgivings,—­no disappointment,—­no hasty, feverish, exhausting excitement.”

Thus endeth the First Book of Hyperion.  I make no record of the winter.  Paul Flemming buried himself in books; in old, dusty books.  He studied diligently the ancient poetic lore of Germany, from Frankish Legends of Saint George, and Saxon Rhyme-Chronicles, down through Nibelungen Lieds, and Helden-Buchs, and Songs of the Minnesingers and Mastersingers, and Ships of Fools, and Reinecke Foxes, and Death-Dancesand Lamentations of Damned Souls, into the bright, sunny land of harvests, where, amid the golden grain and the blue corn-flowers, walk the modern bards, and sing.

BOOK II.

Epigraph

“Something the heart must have to cherish,

Must love, and joy, and sorrow learn;

Something with passion clasp, or perish,

And in itself to ashes burn.”

CHAPTER I. SPRING.

It was a sweet carol, which the Rhodian children sang of old in Spring, bearing in their hands, from door to door, a swallow, as herald of the season;

“The Swallow is come!

The Swallow is come!

O fair are the seasons, and light

Are the days that she brings,

With her dusky wings,

And her bosom snowy white.”

A pretty carol, too, is that, which the Hungarian boys, on the islands of the Danube, sing to the returning stork in Spring;

“Stork!  Stork! poor Stork!

Why is thy foot so bloody?

A Turkish boy hath torn it;

Hungarian boy will heal it,

With fiddle, fife, and drum.”