n golden flame,
And though she looked round,
Yet no one came!

"Presently came the night,
Sadly to greet her,--
Moon in her silver light,
Stars in their glitter.
Then sank the moon away
Under the billow,
Still wept the maid alone--
There by the willow!

"Through the long darkness,
By the stream rolling,
Hour after hour went on
Tolling and tolling.
Long was the darkness,
Lonely and stilly;
Shrill came the night-wind,
Piercing and chilly.

"Shrill blew the morning breeze,
Biting and cold,
Bleak peers the gray dawn
Over the wold.
Bleak over moor and stream
Looks the grey dawn,
Gray, with dishevelled hair,
Still stands the willow there--

THE MAID IS GONE!

"Domine, Domine!
Sing we a litany,--
Sing for poor maiden-hearts broken and
weary;
Domine, Domine!
Sing we a litany,
Wail we and weep we a wild Miserere!"

One of the chief beauties of this ballad (for the translation of which I
received some well-merited compliments) is the delicate way in which the
suicide of the poor young woman under the willow-tree is hinted at; for
that she threw herself into the water and became one among the lilies
of the stream, is as clear as a pikestaff. Her suicide is committed some
time in the darkness, when the slow hours move on tolling and tolling,
and is hinted at darkly as befits the time and the deed.

But that unromantic brute, Van Cutsem, the Dutch Charge-d'Affaires, sent
to the Kartoffelnkranz of the week after a conclusion of the ballad,
which shows what a poor creature he must be. His pretext for writing it
was, he said, because he could not bear such melancholy endings to poems
and young women, and therefore he submitted the following lines:--

I.

"Long by the willow-trees
Vainly they sought her,
Wild rang the mother's screams
O'er the gray water:
'Where is my lovely one?
Where is my daughter?

II.

"'Rouse thee, sir constable--
Rouse thee and look;
Fisherman, bring your net,
Boatman your hook.
Beat in the lily-beds,
Dive in the brook!'

III.

"Vainly the constable
Shouted and called her;
Vainly the fisherman
Beat the green alder;
Vainly he flung the net,
Never