Nay, more like a frantic lamentation

From a howling set

Of demons met

To wake a dead relation.

Badly, madly, the vapours fly
Over the dark distracted sky,

At a pace that no pen can paint!
Black and vague like the shadows of dreams,
Scudding over the moon that seems

Shorn of half her usual beams,
As pale as if she would faint!

The lightning flashes,

The thunder crashes,

The trees encounter with horrible clashes,
While rolling up from marish and bog,
Rank and rich,

As from Stygian ditch,

Rises a foul sulphureous fog,

Hinting that Satan himself is agog,—

But leaving at once this heroical pitch, The night is a very bad night in which You wouldn't turn out a dog.

Yet ONE there is abroad in the storm,
And whenever by chance

The moon gets a glance,

She spies the Traveller's lonely form,
Walking, leaping, striding along,

As none can do but the super-strong;

And flapping his arms to keep him warm,

143

For the breeze from the North is a regular starver, And to tell the truth,

More keen, in sooth,

And cutting than any German carver!

However, no time it is to lag;

And on he scrambles from crag to crag,
Like one determined never to flag-
Now weathers a block

Of jutting rock,

With hardly room for a toe to wag;
But holding on by a timber snag,
That looks like the arm of a friendly hag;
Then stooping under a drooping bough,

Or leaping over some horrid chasm,
Enough to give any heart a spasm!

And sinking down a precipice now,
Keeping his feet the Deuce knows how,
In spots whence all creatures would keep aloof,
Except the Goat, with his cloven hoof,
Who clings to the shallowest ledge as if
He grew

like the weed on the face of the cliff! So down, still down, the Traveller goes, Safe as the Chamois amid his snows,

Though fiercer than ever the hurricane blows,

And round him eddy, with whirl and whizz,

Tornadoes of hail, and sleet, and rain,

Enough to bewilder a weaker brain,

Or blanch any other visage than his, Which spite of lightning, thunder, and hail, The blinding sleet, and the freezing gale, And the horrid abyss,

If his foot should miss,

Instead of tending at all to pale,

Like cheeks that feel the chill of affright—
Remains the very reverse of white!

His heart is granite-his iron nerve
Feels no convulsive twitches;

And as to his foot, it does not swerve,

[serve

Tho' the Screech-Owls are flitting about him that For parrots to Brocken Witches!

Nay, full in his very path he spies

The gleam of the Wehr Wolf's horrid eyes;

But if his members quiver—

It is not for that-no, it is not for that

Nor rat,

Nor cat,

As black as your hat,

Nor the snake that hiss'd, nor the toad that spat, Nor glimmering candles of dead men's fat,

Nor even the flap of the Vampire Bat,

No anserine skin would rise thereat,
It's the cold that makes Him shiver!

So down, still down, through gully and glen,
Never trodden by foot of men,

Past the Eagle's nest, and the She-Wolf's den,
Never caring a jot how steep

Or how narrow the track he has to keep,
Or how wide and deep

An abyss to leap,

Or what may fly, or walk, or creep,
Down he hurries through darkness and storm,
Flapping his arms to keep him warm-
Till threading many a pass abhorrent,

At last he reaches the mountain gorge,
And takes a path along by a torrent—

The very identical path, by St. George! Down which young Fridolin went to the Forge, With a message meant for his own death-warrant !

Young Fridolin! young Fridolin !
So free from sauce, and sloth, and sin,
The best of pages

Whatever their ages,

Since first that singular fashion came in—
Not he like those modern and idle young gluttons
With little jackets, so smart and spruce,
Of Lincoln green, sky-blue, or puce—
And a little gold lace you may introduce-
Very showy, but as for use,

Not worth so many buttons!

Young Fridolin! young Fridolin!
Of his duty so true a fulfiller—
But here we need no farther go,

For whoever desires the Tale to know

May read it all in Schiller.

Faster now the Traveller speeds,
Whither his guiding beacon leads,
For by yonder glare

In the murky air,

He knows that the Eisen Hutte is there!
With its sooty Cyclops, savage and grim,
Hosts, a guest had better forbear,
Whose thoughts are set upon dainty fare-
But stiff with cold in every limb,

The Furnace Fire is the bait for Him!

Faster and faster still he goes,

Whilst redder and redder the welkin glows,
And the lowest clouds that scud in the sky
Get crimson fringes in flitting by.
Till lo! amid the lurid light,

The darkest object intensely dark,
Just where the bright is intensely bright,
The Forge, the Forge itself is in sight,

Like the pitch-black hull of a burning bark, With volleying smoke, and many a spark, Vomiting fire, red, yellow, and white!

Restless, quivering tongues of flame!
Heavenward striving still to go,
While others, reversed in the stream below,
Seem seeking a place we will not name,
But well that Traveller knows the same,