!

MORAL.

There are folks about town--to name no names--
Who much resemble that deafest of Dames!
And over their tea, and muffins, and crumpets,
Circulate many a scandalous word,
And whisper tales they could only have heard
Through some such Diabolical Trumpets!

THE FORGE.[44]

A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE.

"Who's here, beside foul weather?"--KING LEAR.

"Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,
Should have stood that night against my fire"
--CORDELIA

[Footnote 44: This Poem was doubtless one of the results of Hood's
residence in Germany. It is suggested apparently in about equal
proportions by the Walpurgis-night in _Faust_, and Schiller's _Gang
nach dem Eisenhammer_. Possibly Hood had been stirred up to the attempt
by Retzsch's outlines. He has mixed up localities with the utmost
freedom, the Harz, the Black Forest, and the Scene of Schiller's Poem.
The influence of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ is obvious throughout.]

PART I

Like a dead man gone to his shroud,
The sun has sunk in a copper cloud,
And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token,--
Playing a wild funereal air
Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there--
In short, if the truth were spoken,
It's an ugly night for anywhere,
But an awful one for the Brocken!

For oh! to stop
On that mountain top,
After the dews of evening drop,
Is always a dreary frolic--
Then what must it be when nature groans,
And the very mountain murmurs and moans
As if it writhed with the cholic--
With other strange supernatural tones,
From wood, and water, and echoing stones,
Not to forget unburied bones--
In a region so diabolic!

A place where he whom we call Old Scratch,
By help of his Witches--a precious batch--
Gives midnight concerts and sermons,
In a Pulpit and Orchestra built to match,
A plot right worthy of him to hatch,
And well adapted, he knows, to catch
The musical, mystical Germans!

However it's quite
As wild a night
As ever was known on that sinister height
Since the Demon-Dance was morriced--
The earth is dark, and the sky is scowling,
And the blast through the pines is howling and growling,
As if a thousand wolves were prowling
About in the old BLACK FOREST!

Madly, sadly, the Tempest raves
Through the narrow gullies and hollow caves,
And bursts on the rocks in windy waves,