the fiend
By magic and directed by the fiend.
Of some effect these tales were and some force
Had with the Duke, who lent an ear so far
As to ordain Kuno's descendants all
To proof of skill ere their succession to
The father's office. Kurt himself hath shot
The silver ring from out the popinjay's beak--
A good shot he, you see, who would succeed.
The Devil guards his mysteries close as God.
For who can say what elementaries
Demoniac lurk in desolate dells and woods
Shadowy? malicious vassals of that power
Who signs himself, thro' these, a slave to those,
Those mortals who act open with his Hell,
Those only who seek secretly and woo.
Of these free, fatal bullets let me speak:
There may be such; our Earth hath things as strange;
Then only in coarse fancies may exist;
For fancy is among our peasantry
A limber juggler with the weird and dark;
For Superstition hides not her grim face,
A skeleton grin on leprous ghastliness,
From Ignorance's mossy thatches low.
A cross-way, as I heard, among gaunt hills,
A solitude convulsed of rocks and trees
Blasted; and on the stony cross-road drawn
A bloody circle with a bloody sword;
Herein rude characters; a skull and thighs
Fantastic fixed before a fitful fire
Of spiteful coals. Eleven of the clock
Cast, the first bullet leaves the mold,--the lead
Mixed with three bullets that have hit their mark,
Burnt blood,--the wounded Sacramental Host,
Unswallowed and unhallowed, oozed when shot
Fixed to a riven pine.--Ere twelve o'clock,
When dwindling specters in their rotting shrouds
Quit musty tombs to mumble hollow woes
In Midnight's horrored ear, with never a cry,
Word or weak whisper, till that hour sound,
Must the free balls be cast; and these shall be
In number three and sixty; three of which
Semial--he the Devil's minister--
Claims for his master and stamps as his own
To hit awry their mark, askew for harm.
_Those other sixty shall not miss their mark._
No cry, no word, no whisper, tho' there gibe
Most monstrous shapes that flicker in thick mist
Lewd human countenances or leer out
Swoln animal faces with fair forms of men,
While wide-winged owls fan the drear, dying coals,
That lick thin, slender tongues of purple fire
From viperous red, and croaks the night-hawk near.
No cry, no word, no whisper should there come
Weeping a wandering form with weary, white