They are full of unusual melody, and are simple and wise enough to be sung by girls knitting in the sunshine while their lovers bend above them.

One of these, a beautiful thing, with that touch of dark fate at its close which is so common in folk-stories, is hidden away in _Paracelsus_.
"Over the sea," it begins: Over the sea our galleys went, With cleaving prows in order brave To a speeding wind and a bounding wave, A gallant armament: Each bark built out of a forest-tree Left leafy and rough as first it grew, And nailed all over the gaping sides, Within and without, with black bull-hides, Seethed in fat, and suppled with flame, To bear the playful billows' game.
It is made in a happy melody, and the curious mingling in the tale, as it continues, of the rudest ships, as described above, with purple hangings, cedar tents, and noble statues, A hundred shapes of lucid stone, and with gentle islanders from Graecian seas, is characteristic of certain folk-tales, especially those of Gascony.

That it is spoken by Paracelsus as a parable of the state of mind he has reached, in which he clings to his first fault with haughty and foolish resolution, scarcely lessens the romantic element in it.

That is so strong that we forget that it is meant as a parable.
There is another song which touches the edge of romance, in which Paracelsus describes how he will bury in sweetness the ideal aims he had in youth, building a pyre for them of all perfumed things; and the last lines of the verse I quote leave us in a castle of old romance-- And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine worm-eaten shroud Which breaks to dust when once unrolled; Or shredded perfume, like a cloud From closet long to quiet vowed, With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among, As when a queen, long dead, was young.
The other is a song, more than a song, in _Pippa Passes_, a true piece of early folk-romance, with a faint touch of Greek story, wedded to Eastern and mediaeval elements, in its roving imaginations.

It is admirably pictorial, and the air which broods over it is the sunny and still air which, in men's fancy, was breathed by the happy children of the Golden Age.