‘The Venice of the North.’ Bright sunshine over everything— Catching and gilding with its magic touch The burnished domes and spires Of this fair city of a northern clime, Where countless waterways reflect Man’s stony, strange devices of a bygone time, When Nature revelled in her loneliness as queen Upon the gray, grim rocks which girt blue Maelar’s deep ; Whilst all around—o’er forest and holm— A soft, blue summer haze did hide The whole bright world below, In one enchanting sleep. That age is past— That dim, that magic time of yore, When Vikings brave and free— Fit children of the Asgard heroes old— Held sway o’er this calm Venice of the North As Odin’s kingdom, undisputed, bold. Their reign is past, and that of him— The blue-eyed David of the North*— Who bare his country’s wrongs, the tyrant’s yoke, awhile ; Then, in an instant—as yon summer sun Blazed out—dispersing fierily the foe, With one stern warning : ‘ Forth ! ’ All has not fled : Nature still holds her regal sway unchecked E’en to the city doors,† Where Lake and Sea do meet at last, And stately ships, with flags of liberty, Majestically float forth, as in the days long past. The silver wave still laps the shore Of many a moss-grown berg and pine-clad hill, Girding the city in on every side, Which tint with thousand shades the mirror’d blue beneath, Proclaiming, by the warble of their birds, Stockholm is Nature’s still ! L. Muriel Raikes Bromage .

† The locks, to the south of the city, dividing lake and sea.