with liquid fire effulge.
They're howling drunk, these valiant counts!

One through the salad idly wields
A foot; another scolds the sick.
Some like the lions on their shields
With gaping mouths the fancy trick.

In voice still hoarse from silence long
In the tomb's dampness and restraint,
Max playfully intones a song
Of thirteen hundred, crude and quaint.

Albrecht, of quarrelsome repute,
Stirs right and left a war intense,
And drubs about with fist and foot,
As once he drubbed the Saracens.

And heated Fritz his helmet doffs,
Not deeming he's a headless trunk.
Then down pell-mell mid roars and scoffs
Together roll the phantoms drunk.

Ah! 'T is a hideous battle-ground,
Where pots and weapons bang and scud,
Where every dead man through some wound
Doth vomit victuals up for blood.

And Bjorn observes them, sad of eye,
And haggard, while athwart the panes
The dawn comes creeping stealthily,
With blue, thin lights, and darkness wanes.

The prostrate mass of rusty brown
Pales like a torch in daylight's room,
Until the drunkest pours him down
At last the stirrup-cup of doom.

The cock crows loud. And with the day
Once more with haughty mien and bold,
Their revel-weary heads they lay
Upon their marble pillows cold.

THE WATCH

Now twice my watch have I taken,
And twice as I've gazing sat,
The hand has pointed unshaken
To one--and it's long past that!

The clock's light cadences linger.
The sun-dial laughs from the lawn,
And points with a long, gaunt finger
The path that its shade has drawn.

A steeple ironically
Calls the true time to me.
The belfry bell makes tally
And taunts me with accents free.

Ah, dead is the wretch! I sought not,
Last night, to my reverie sold,
Its ruby circle! I thought not
Of glimmering key of gold!

No longer I see with pleasure
The spring of the balance-wheel
Flit hither and there at measure,
Like a butterfly form of steel.

When Hippogriff bears me, yearning,
Through skies of another sphere,
My soul-reft body goes turning
Wherever the steed may veer.

Eternity still is giving
Its gaze to the lifeless face.
Time seeketh the heart once living,
His ear at the old watch-case,--

That heart whose regular motion
Was followed within my breast
By wave-beats of life's full ocean!
Ah well! the watch is at rest.

But its brother is beating ever,
Steadfast and sturdy kept
By One Who forgetteth never,--
Who wound it the while I slept.

THE MERMAIDS