| |
| BEETLING walls with ivy grown, | |
| Frowning heights of mossy stone; | |
| Turret, with its flaunting flag | |
| Flung from battlemented crag; | |
| Dungeon-keep and fortalice | 5 |
| Looking down a precipice | |
| O’er the darkly glancing wave | |
| By the Lurline-haunted cave; | |
| Robber haunt and maiden bower, | |
| Home of love and crime and power,— | 10 |
| That ’s the scenery, in fine, | |
| Of the Legends of the Rhine. | |
| |
| One bold baron, double-dyed | |
| Bigamist and parricide, | |
| And, as most the stories run, | 15 |
| Partner of the Evil One; | |
| Injured innocence in white, | |
| Fair but idiotic quite, | |
| Wringing of her lily hands; | |
| Valor fresh from Paynim lands, | 20 |
| Abbot ruddy, hermit pale, | |
| Minstrel fraught with many a tale,— | |
| Are the actors that combine | |
| In the Legends of the Rhine. | |
| |
| Bell-mouthed flagons round a board; | 25 |
| Suits of armor, shield, and sword; | |
| Kerchief with its bloody stain; | |
| Ghosts of the untimely slain; | |
| Thunder-clap and clanking chain; | |
| Headsman’s block and shining axe; | 30 |
| Thumbscrews, crucifixes, racks; | |
| Midnight-tolling chapel bell, | |
| Heard across the gloomy fell,— | |
| These, and other pleasant facts, | |
| Are the properties that shine | 35 |
| In the Legends of the Rhine. | |
| |
| Maledictions, whispered vows | |
| Underneath the linden boughs; | |
| Murder, bigamy, and theft; | |
| Travellers of goods bereft; | 40 |
| Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,— | |
| Everything but honest toil, | |
| Are the deeds that best define | |
| Every Legend of the Rhine. | |
| |
| That Virtue always meets reward, | 45 |
| But quicker when it wears a sword; | |
| That Providence has special care | |
| Of gallant knight and lady fair; | |
| That villains, as a thing of course, | |
| Are always haunted by remorse,— | 50 |
| Is the moral, I opine, | |
| Of the Legends of the Rhine. | |
| |
