Nay, more like a frantic lamentation From a howling set Of demons met To wake a dead relation. Badly, madly, the vapours fly At a pace that no pen can paint! Shorn of half her usual beams, The lightning flashes, The thunder crashes, The trees encounter with horrible clashes, 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, The moon gets a glance, She spies the Traveller's lonely form, 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, Of jutting rock, With hardly room for a toe to wag; Or leaping over some horrid chasm, And sinking down a precipice now, 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— His heart is granite-his iron nerve 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, So down, still down, through gully and glen, Past the Eagle's nest, and the She-Wolf's den, Or how narrow the track he has to keep, An abyss to leap, Or what may fly, or walk, or creep, At last he reaches the mountain gorge, 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 ! Whatever their ages, Since first that singular fashion came in— Not worth so many buttons! Young Fridolin! young Fridolin! For whoever desires the Tale to know May read it all in Schiller. Faster now the Traveller speeds, In the murky air, He knows that the Eisen Hutte is there! The Furnace Fire is the bait for Him! Faster and faster still he goes, Whilst redder and redder the welkin glows, The darkest object intensely dark, 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! |