* * *

SECOND LIFE.

After life's departing sigh,
To the spots I loved most dearly,
In the sunshine and the shadow,
By the fountain welling clearly,
Through the wood and o'er the meadow,
Flit I like a butterfly.

There a gentle pair I spy.
Round the maiden's tresses flying,
From her chaplet I discover
All that I had lost in dying,
Still with her and with her lover.
Who so happy then as I?

For she smiles with laughing eye;
And his lips to hers he presses,
Vows of passion interchanging,
Stifling her with sweet caresses,
O'er her budding beauties ranging;
And around the twain I fly.

And she sees me fluttering nigh;
And beneath his ardour trembling,
Starts she up--then off I hover.
"Look there, dearest!" Thus dissembling,
Speaks the maiden to her lover--
"Come and catch that butterfly!"

* * * * *

In the days of his boyhood, and of Monk Lewis, Sir Walter Scott
translated the Erl King, and since then it has been a kind of
assay-piece for aspiring German students to thump and hammer at will.
We have heard it sung so often at the piano by soft-voiced maidens,
and hirsute musicians, before whose roaring the bull of Phalaris
might be dumb, that we have been accustomed to associate it with
stiff white cravats, green tea, and a superabundance of lemonade. But
to do full justice to its unearthly fascination, one ought to hear it
chanted by night in a lonely glade of the Schwartzwald or Spessart
forest, with the wind moaning as an accompaniment, and the ghostly
shadows of the branches flitting in the moonlight across the path.

THE ERL KING.

Who rides so late through the grisly night?
'Tis a father and child, and he grasps him tight;
He wraps him close in his mantle's fold,
And shelters the boy from the biting cold.

"My son, why thus to my arm dost cling?"
"Father, dost thou not see the Erlie-king?
The king with his crown and long black train!"
"My son, 'tis a streak of the misty rain! "

"Come hither, thou darling! come, go with me!
Fair games know I that I'll play with thee;
Many bright flowers my kingdoms hold!
My mother has many a robe of gold!"

"O father, dear father and dost thou not hear
What the Erlie-king whispers so low in mine ear?"
"Calm thee, my boy, 'tis only the breeze
Rustling the dry leaves beneath the trees!"

"Wilt thou go, bonny boy! wilt thou