his chain!
Ended the poet's pain!
Freed by a ransom (his relatives' dole),
Humbled by grief and shame,
Injured in name and fame,
Drags he his crippled frame
Back through Tyrol.
Then, in a plaintive song
Chanting his grievous wrong,
Oswald von Wolkenstein,
Last of his gifted line,
Dies in Schloss Hauenstein;
God rest his soul!

AFTER THE VINTAGE

How can my vineyard's charm be told,
As it basks in the autumn haze?
The Frost King's touch, so light and cold,
Like that of the Persian king of old,
Hath turned its roof from green to gold,
Till the hillside seems ablaze.

Threading its maze of arbors fair
Under its saffron bowers,
I watch, in the crisp, November air,
Through vine-framed openings here and there
The ivied walls of castles rare
And ruined Roman towers.

Sapphire blue is the cloudless sky,
White are the mountain walls,
Rainbow-hued are the tints that lie
Lavishly spread on the forests high,
Where leaves by millions flame and die,
As the chill of Autumn falls.

Over the slopes in sun and shade
The terraced vines descend,
Like stately steps of a broad cascade,
Or an amphitheatre's seats, arrayed
In folds of sumptuous, gold brocade,
Where red and amber blend.

I love to see, from the rising sun
Each terrace gain its crown,
When the splendid dawn hath just begun,
From the crest of the mountain it hath won,
To gild the vine-rows one by one,
As the mellow glow creeps down.

And when the day's receding light
Deserts the vale below,
I trace its noiseless, upward flight
Through darkening zones of foliage bright,
Till all the world is lost in night
Save pyramids of snow.

THE PASSING MOON

In my loggia bright I watch to-night
The full moon sailing by;
From a crystal creek in a glaciered peak
It slipped to the open sky,
And now rides free in a clear, blue sea,
With not an island nigh.

Through pearly haze its light displays
Each buttressed mountain side,
And softly shines through stately pines
Where feudal castles hide,
And every height grows dazzling white
In the foam of a silver tide.

From the eastern side of the valley wide
To its snow-capped western rim
It will hold its way, till the dawning day
Shall have made its disk grow dim;
Then, leaving the blue, will drop from view
Behind the mountain's brim.

Whence did it climb on its path sublime,
Ere it left that icy height?
And where will it go, when yonder snow
Is reache