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10
FOREWORD
an hour later. The windows and doors are all open, and
you may sit and read till midnight without a candle. O
how beautiful is the summer night, which is not night, but
a sunless yet unclouded day, descending upon earth with
dews, and shadows, and refreshing coolness! How
beautiful the long, mild twilight, which like a silver clasp unites
to-day with yesterday! How beautiful the silent hour, when
Morning and Evening thus sit together, hand in hand,
beneath the starless sky of midnight! From the church-tower
in the public square the bell tolls the hour, with a soft,
musical chime; and the watchman, whose watch-tower is
the belfry, blows a blast in his horn, for each stroke of
the hammer, and four times, to the four corners of the
heavens, in a sonorous voice he chants,—
" Ho! watchman, ho!
Twelve is the clock!
God keep oar town
From fire and brand
And hostile hand!
Twelve is the dock!"
From his swallow’s nest in the belfry he can see the sun
all night long; and farther north the priest stands at his
door in the warm midnight, and lights his pipe with a
common burning glass.
I trust that these remarks will not be deemed irrelevant
to the poem, but will lead to a clearer understanding of it.
The translation is literal, perhaps to a fault. In no instance
hare I done the author a wrong, by introducing into his
work any supposed improvements or embellishments of
my own. I have preserved even the measure; that
inexorable hexameter, in which, it must be confessed, the
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