,
Watching with flaming eyes to seize your soul.
But when the hour of midnight sounds, be sure
You have your bullets, neither more nor less;
For if through fear one more or less you have,
Your soul is forfeit to Hell's majesty.--
Then while the hour of midnight strikes, will come
A noise of galloping hoofs and outriders,
Shouting; six midnight steeds,--their nostrils, pits
Of burning blood,--postilioned, roll a stage,
Black and with groaning wheels of spinning fire:
"Room there!--ho! ho!--who bars the mountain-way?
On over him!"--But fear not, nor fare forth;
'T is but the last trick of your bounden slave.
And ere the red moon rushes through the clouds
And dives again, high the huge leaders leap,
Their fore-hoofs fire, and their eye-balls flame,
And, spun a spiral spark into the night,
Whistling the phantom flies and fades away.
Some say there comes no stage; that Hackelnburg,
Wild-huntsman of the Harz, comes dark as storm,
With rain and wind and demon dogs of Hell,
The terror of his hunting-horn, an owl,
And the dim deer he hunts, rush on before;
The forests crash, and whirlwinds are the leaves,
And all the skies a-thunder, as he hurls
Straight on the circle, horse and hounds and stag.
And at the last, plutonian-cloaked, there comes,
Upon a stallion gaunt and lurid black,
The minister of Satan, Sammael,
Who greets you, and informs you, and assures.
Enough! these wives'-tales told, to what I've seen:
To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf here
With Kurt and his assembled men, I met.
The abundant year,--like some sweet wife,--a-smile
At her brown baby, Autumn, in her arms,
Stood 'mid the garnered harvests of her fields
Dreaming of days that pass like almoners
Scattering their alms in minted gold of flowers;
Of nights, that forest all the skies with stars,
Wherethrough the moon--bare-bosomed huntress--rides,
One cloud before her like a flying fawn.
Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eve
The test of Rudolf's skill postponed, at which
He seemed impatient. And 't was then I heard
How he an execrable marksman was;
And tales that told of near, incredible shots,
That missed their mark; or how his flint-lock oft
Flashed harmless powder, while the curious deer
Stood staring; as in pity of such aim
Bidding him try his marksmanship again.
Howbeit, he that day acquit