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Home  »  Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Legends and Lyrics. IV. A Legend of Bregenz

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864)

GIRT round with rugged mountains

The fair Lake Constance lies;

In her blue heart reflected

Shine back the starry skies;

And, watching each white cloudlet

Float silently and slow,

You think a piece of Heaven

Lies on our earth below!

Midnight is there: and Silence,

Enthroned in Heaven, looks down

Upon her own calm mirror,

Upon a sleeping town:

For Bregenz, that quaint city

Upon the Tyrol shore,

Has stood above Lake Constance,

A thousand years and more.

Her battlements and towers,

From off their rocky steep,

Have cast their trembling shadow

For ages on the deep:

Mountain, and lake, and valley,

A sacred legend know,

Of how the town was saved, one night

Three hundred years ago.

Far from her home and kindred,

A Tyrol maid had fled,

To serve in the Swiss valleys

And toil for daily bread;

And every year that fleeted

So silently and fast,

Seemed to bear farther from her

The memory of the Past.

She served kind, gentle masters,

Nor asked for rest or change;

Her friends seemed no more new ones,

Their speech seemed no more strange;

And when she led her cattle

To pasture every day,

She ceased to look and wonder

On which side Bregenz lay.

She spoke no more of Bregenz,

With longing and with tears:

Her Tyrol home seemed faded

In a deep mist of years;

She heeded not the rumours

Of Austrian war and strife;

Each day she rose contented,

To the calm toils of life.

Yet, when her master’s children

Would clustering round her stand,

She sang them ancient ballads

Of her own native land;

And when at morn and evening

She knelt before God’s throne,

The accents of her childhood

Rose to her lips alone.

And so she dwelt: the valley

More peaceful year by year;

When suddenly strange portents,

Of some great deed seemed near.

The golden corn was bending

Upon its fragile stalk,

While farmers, heedless of their fields,

Paced up and down in talk.

The men seemed stern and altered,

With looks cast on the ground;

With anxious faces, one by one,

The women gathered round;

All talk of flax, or spinning,

Or work, was put away;

The very children seemed afraid

To go alone to play.

One day, out in the meadow

With strangers from the town,

Some secret plan discussing,

The men walked up and down.

Yet, now and then seemed watching,

A strange uncertain gleam,

That looked like lances ’mid the trees,

That stood below the stream.

At eve they all assembled,

Then care and doubt were fled;

With jovial laugh they feasted;

The board was nobly spread.

The elder of the village

Rose up, his glass in hand,

And cried, “We drink the downfall

“Of an accursed land!

“The night is growing darker,

“Ere one more day is flown,

“Bregenz, our foemen’s stronghold,

“Bregenz shall be our own!”

The women shrank in terror,

(Yet Pride, too, had her part),

But one poor Tyrol maiden

Felt death within her heart.

Before her, stood fair Bregenz;

Once more her towers arose;

What were the friends beside her?

Only her country’s foes!

The faces of her kinsfolk,

The days of childhood flown,

The echoes of her mountains,

Reclaimed her as their own!

Nothing she heard around her,

(Though shouts rang forth again),

Gone were the green Swiss valleys,

The pasture, and the plain;

Before her eyes one vision,

And in her heart one cry,

That said, “Go forth, save Bregenz,

And then, if need be, die!”

With trembling haste and breathless,

With noiseless step she sped;

Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed;

She loosed the strong white charger,

That fed from out her hand,

She mounted, and she turned his head

Towards her native land.

Out—out into the darkness—

Faster, and still more fast;

The smooth grass flies behind her,

The chestnut wood is past;

She looks up; clouds are heavy:

Why is her steed so slow?—

Scarcely the wind beside them,

Can pass them as they go.

“Faster!” she cries, “O, faster!”

Eleven the church-bells chime:

“O God,” she cries, “help Bregenz,

And bring me there in time!”

But louder than bells’ ringing,

Or lowing of the kine,

Grows nearer in the midnight

The rushing of the Rhine.

Shall not the roaring waters

Their headlong gallop check?

The steed draws back in terror,

She leans upon his neck

To watch the flowing darkness;

The bank is high and steep;

One pause—he staggers forward,

And plunges in the deep.

She strives to pierce the blackness,

And looser throws the rein;

Her steed must breast the waters

That dash above his mane.

How gallantly, how nobly,

He struggles through the foam,

And see—in the far distance,

Shine out the lights of home!

Up the steep banks he bears her,

And now, they rush again

Towards the heights of Bregenz,

That tower above the plain.

They reach the gate of Bregenz,

Just as the midnight rings,

And out come serf and soldier

To meet the news she brings.

Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight

Her battlements are manned;

Defiance greets the army

That marches on the land.

And if to deeds heroic

Should endless fame be paid,

Bregenz does well to honour

The noble Tyrol maid.

Three hundred years are vanished,

And yet upon the hill

An old stone gateway rises,

To do her honour still.

And there, when Bregenz women

Sit spinning in the shade,

They see in quaint old carving

The Charger and the Maid.

And when, to guard old Bregenz,

By gateway, street, and tower,

The warder paces all night long,

And calls each passing hour;

“Nine,” “ten,” “eleven,” he cries aloud,

And then (Oh crown of Fame!)

When midnight pauses in the skies,

He calls the maiden’s name!