| |
| DOWN the broad, imperial Danube, | |
| As its wandering waters guide, | |
| Past the mountains and the meadows, | |
| Winding with the stream, we glide. | |
| |
| Ratisbon we leave behind us, | 5 |
| Where the spires and gables throng, | |
| And the huge cathedral rises, | |
| Like a fortress, vast and strong. | |
| |
| Close beside it stands the town-hall, | |
| With its massive tower, alone, | 10 |
| Brooding o’er the dismal secret, | |
| Hidden in its heart of stone. | |
| |
| There, beneath the old foundations, | |
| Lay the prisons of the state, | |
| Like the last abodes of vengeance, | 15 |
| In the fabled realms of Fate. | |
| |
| And the tides of life above them | |
| Drifted ever, near and wide, | |
| As at Venice, round the prisons, | |
| Sweeps the sea’s incessant tide. | 20 |
| |
| Never, like the far-off dashing, | |
| Or the nearer rush of waves, | |
| Came the tread or murmur downward, | |
| To those dim, unechoing caves. | |
| |
| There the dungeon clasped its victim, | 25 |
| And a stupor chained his breath, | |
| Till the torture woke his senses, | |
| With a sharper touch than death, | |
| |
| Now, through all the vacant silence, | |
| Reign the darkness and the damp, | 30 |
| Broken only when the traveller | |
| Gropes his way, with guide and lamp, | |
| |
| Peering where, all black and shattered, | |
| Eaten with the rust of time, | |
| Lie the fearful signs and tokens | 35 |
| Of an age when law was crime. | |
| |
| Then the guide, with grim precision, | |
| Tells the dismal tale once more, | |
| Tells to living men the tortures | |
| Living men have borne before. | 40 |
| |
| As he speaks, the death-cold cavern | |
| With a sudden life-gush warms, | |
| And, once more, the Torture-Chamber | |
| With its murderous tenants swarms. | |
| |
| Yonder, through the narrow archway, | 45 |
| Comes the culprit in the gloom, | |
| Falters on the fatal threshold, | |
| Totters to the bloody doom. | |
| |
| Here the executioner, lurking, | |
| Waits, with brutal thirst, his hour, | 50 |
| Tool of bloodier men and bolder, | |
| Drunken with the dregs of power. | |
| |
| There the careful leech sits patient, | |
| Watching face and hue and breath, | |
| Weighing life’s fast-ebbing pulses | 55 |
| With the heavier chance of death. | |
| |
| Eking out the little remnant, | |
| Lest the victim die too soon, | |
| And the torture of the morning | |
| Spare the torture of the noon. | 60 |
| |
| Here, behind the heavy grating, | |
| Sits the scribe, with pen and scroll, | |
| Waiting till the giant terror | |
| Bursts the secrets of the soul; | |
| |
| Till the fearful tale of treason | 65 |
| From the shrieking lips is wrung, | |
| Or the final, false confession | |
| Quivers from the trembling tongue! | |
| |
| But the gray old tower is fading, | |
| Fades, in sunshine, from the eye, | 70 |
| Like some bird whose distant pinion | |
| Dimly blots the morning sky. | |
| |
| So the ancient gloom and terror | |
| Of the ages fade away, | |
| In the sunlight of the present, | 75 |
| Of our better, purer day! | |
| |
