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THE BELFRY OF BRUGES
In the market-place of Bruges stands the belfry
old and brown;
Thrice consumed and thrice rebuilded, still it watches o'er the
town.
As the summer morn was breaking, on that lofty
tower I stood,
And the world threw off the darkness, like the weeds of
widowhood.
Thick with towns and hamlets studded, and with
streams and vapors
gray,
Like a shield embossed with silver, round and vast the landscape
lay.
At my feet the city slumbered. From
its chimneys, here and
there,
Wreaths of snow-white smoke, ascending, vanished, ghost-like,
into air.
Not a sound rose from the city at that early morning
hour,
But I heard a heart of iron beating in the ancient tower.
From their nests beneath the rafters sang the swallows
wild and
high;
And the world, beneath me sleeping, seemed more distant than the
sky.
Then most musical and solemn, bringing back the
olden times,
With their strange, unearthly changes rang the melancholy chimes,
Like the psalms from some old cloister, when the
nuns sing in the
choir;
And the great bell tolled among them, like the chanting of a
friar.
Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms
filled my brain;
They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again;
All the Foresters of Flanders,--mighty Baldwin
Bras de Fer,
Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre.
I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those
days of old;
Stately dames, like queens attended, knights who bore the Fleece
of Gold
Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden
argosies;
Ministers from twenty nations; more than royal pomp and ease.
I beheld proud Maximilian, kneeling humbly on the
ground;
I beheld the gentle Mary, hunting with her hawk and hound;
And her lighted bridal-chamber, where a duke slept
with the
queen,
And the armed guard around them, and the sword unsheathed
between.
I beheld the Flemish weavers, with Namur and Juliers
bold,
Marching homeward from the bloody battle of the Spurs of Gold;
Saw the light at Minnewater, saw the White Hoods
moving west,
Saw great Artevelde victorious scale the Golden Dragon's nest.
And again the whiskered Spaniard all the land with
terror smote;
And again the wild alarum sounded from the tocsin's throat;
Till the bell of Ghent responded o'er lagoon and
dike of sand,
"I am Roland! I am Roland! there is victory in the land!"
Then the sound of drums aroused me. The
awakened city's roar
Chased the phantoms I had summoned back into their graves once
more.
Hours had passed away like minutes; and, before
I was aware,
Lo! the shadow of the belfry crossed the sun-illumined square.
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