And pleading countenance of her you love,
Faded with tears of waiting; beckoning
With gray, large arms or censuring; her shame
In dull and desolate eyes; who, if you speak
Or stagger from that circle--hideous change!--
Shrinks, faced a hag of million wrinkles, which
Ridge scaly sharpness of protruding bones,
To rip you limb from limb with taloned claws.
Nor be deceived if some far midnight bell
Boom that anticipated hour, nor leave
By one short inch the bloody orbit, for
The minion varlets of Hell's majesty
Expectant cirque its dim circumference.
But when the hour of midnight smites, be sure
You have your bullets, neither more nor less;
For, if thro' fear one more or less you have,
Your soul is forfeit to those agencies,
Right rathe who are to rend it from the flesh.
And while that hour of midnight sounds a din
Of hurrying hoofs and shouting outriders--
Six snorting steeds 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,--
'Tis but the last trick of your bounden slave:
And ere the red moon strives from dingy clouds
And dives again, high the huge leaders leap
Iron fore-hoofs flashing and big eyes like gledes,
And, spun a spiral spark into the night,
Whistling the phantom flies and fades away.
Some say there comes no stage, but Hackelnburg,
Wild Huntsman of the Harz, rides hoarse in storm,
Dashing the dead leaves with dark dogs of hell
Direful thro' whirling thickets, and his horn
Croaks doleful as an owl's hoot while he hurls
Straight 'neath rain-streaming skies of echoes, sheer
Plunging the magic circle horse and hounds.
And then will come, plutonian clad and slim,
Upon a stallion vast intensely black,
Semial, Satan's lurid minister,
To hail you and inform you and assure.--
Enough! these wives-tales heard to what I've seen;
To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf there
With Kurt and all his picturesque foresters
Met me. And then the rounding year was ripe;
Throbbing the red heart of full Autumn: When
Each morning gleams crisp frost on shriveled fields;
Each noon sits veiled in mysteries of mist;
Each night unrolls a miracle woof of stars,
Where moon--bare-bosomed goddess of the hunt--
Wades calm, crushed clouds or treads the vaster blue.
Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eve
The test