s around it swarm'd.

You, in the tower, a hole may see;
A window there has ceas'd to be.
From that once lean'd a damsel bright,
In evening's red and fading light,
And star'd intently down the way,
Up which should come her lover gay:
But, time it flies on rapid wing--
Far off a church is towering,
Within it stand two marble stones,
That rest above the lovers' bones.
But see, the wanderer, with pain,
Has reach'd the pile he wish'd to gain;
Whilst Sol, behind the ruin'd walls,
Down into sacred nature falls.

See, there, two hostile nobles fight,
With tiger-rage and giant-might.
There's seen no smoke, there's heard no shot,
For guns and powder yet were not.
'T was custom then, when foemen warr'd,
To win or lose with spear and sword:
A wild heroic song they yell,
And each the other seeks to fell.
Oft, oft, her ownself to destroy,
Her own hand nature does employ.
There casts the hill up fire-flakes,
And Earth's gigantic body quakes:
There, lightnings through the high blue flash,
And ocean's billows wildly dash:
There, men 'gainst men their muscles strain,
And deal out death, and wounds, and pain.
O Nature! to thyself show less
Of hate, and more of tenderness.

How dusky is the air around;
We are no more above the ground;
But, down we wend within the hill,
Whose springs our ears with hissings fill.
See, there, how rich the ruddy gold
Winds snakeways, 'midst the clammy mould
And hard green stone. By torches' ray,
The harvest there men mow away.
But, see ye not yon gath'ring cloud,
Which 'gainst them cometh paley proud;
That holds the spirit of the hill,
Who brings death in its hand so chill:
If down they do not quickly fall,
Most certainly 't will slay them all;
For sorely wrathful is its mood,
Because they break its solitude:
Because its treasure off they bear,
And fling light o'er its gloomy lair.
'T is white, and Kobbold is the name
Which it from oldest days does claim.

Now, back at once into time we go,
For many a hundred years, I trow.
A gothic chamber salutes your sight:
A taper gleams feebly through the night;
A ghostly man by the board you see,
With his hand to his temples muses he:
Parchments, with age discolour'd and dun;
Ancient shields all written upon;
Tree-bark, bearing ciphers half defac'd;
Stones with Runes and characters grac'd;
Things of more worth than ye are aware,
On the mighty table are pil'd up there.
He gazes now in exstatic trance
Through the casement, out into nature