Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.
A Legend of Bregenz
By Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864)G
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!
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.
Upon 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.
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.
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.
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.
All 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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror,
She leans above his neck
To watch the flowing darkness,
The bank is high and steep,
One pause,—he staggers forward,
And plunges in the deep.
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!
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.
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 honor
The noble Tyrol maid.
And yet upon the hill
An old stone gateway rises
To do her honor still.
And there, when Bregenz women
Sit spinning in the shade,
They see, in quaint old carving,
The Charger and the Maid.
By gateway, street, and tower,
The warder paces all night long,
And calls each passing hour,
“Nine,” “ten,” “eleven,” he cries aloud,
And then (O crown of Fame!)
When midnight pauses in the skies,
He calls the maiden’s name!