The Song of the World

t: V— v- -V—+—V ±±v A^ =£ 2d- mong the most beloved of heav'n I be formed in virtue's mould, in e - ter - ni - ty ap - pear, That dwell upon the earth. To fill a ho-ly place. With them in glory too. 1 The Song of the World. (For the Improvement Era.) A bard made rhyme on the king's highway, A migrant minstrel bold. And all who tarried might hear his lay — The pilgrim worn or the courtier gay, For he was glad, and he sang all day A wondrous song of old.

THE SONG OF THE WORLD. 527 The king swept by with hisjpageantry, Nor harkened ever a strain, No alms to a vagrant minstrelsy, While he of the realm's first majesty Must hie him away on his embassy — Away from the blest refrain. A knight in his armied panoply Charged forth at the tocsin call, For he was a regal errantry, To fight for a liege and a dynasty — The song and the singer for such as he Had 'chantment never at all. The martman's visage was old with care, As over the hill he climbed; With gold elusive and hard to spare, W hat mattered to him the day was fair, That out on the highway over there, The song of the world was rhymed? They passed him by thro' the gladsome day — The wonderful minstrel seer — A hurrying, motley pageant they, The viceroy and the poppinjay, The love-lorn churl and the maiden gay, With never a pause to hear. They passed him by on the highway old, And they and their days are gone — The king and his court, with their tawdry erold, The churl and the maid with their love untold — 'Tisonlv the minstrel glad and bold, Who lives in his wondrous song. Bertha A. Kleinman.