follow here:
To bridal bed we ride;
And thou shalt prance a fetter dance
Before me and my bride."

And hurry! hurry! clash, clash, clash!
The wasted form descends,[23]
And fleet as wind through hazel bush
The wild career attends.[23]

Tramp, tramp! along the land they rode,
Splash, splash! along the sea:
The scourge is red, the spur drops blood,
The flashing pebbles flee.

[From Taylor's "Lenora."]

Look up, look up, an airy crewe
In roundel dances reele.
The moone is bryghte and blue the night,
May'st dimly see them wheel.[24]

"Come to, come to, ye ghostlie crewe,
Come to and follow me.
And daunce for us the wedding daunce
When we in bed shall be."

And brush, brush, brush, the ghostlie crew
Come wheeling o'er their heads,
All rustling like the withered leaves
That wyde the whirlwind spreads.

Halloo! halloo! Away they goe
Unheeding wet or drye,
And horse and rider snort and blowe,
And sparkling pebbles flye.

And all that in the moonshine lay
Behynde them fled afar;
And backward scudded overhead
The skye and every star.

Tramp, tramp across the land they speede,
Splash, splash across the sea:
"Hurrah! the dead can ride apace,
Dost fear to ride with me?"

It was this stanza which fascinated Scott, as repeated from memory by Mr.
Cranstoun; and he retained it without much change in his version. There
is no mention of the sea in Buerger, whose hero is killed in the battle of
Prague and travels only by land. But Taylor nationalized and
individualized the theme by making his William a knight of Richard the
Lion Heart's, who had fallen in Holy Land. Scott followed him and made
his a crusader in the army of Frederic Barbarossa. Buerger's poem was
written in an eight-lined stanza, but Taylor and Scott both chose the
common English ballad verse, with its folkloreish associations, as the
best vehicle for reproducing the grewsome substance of the story; and
Taylor gave an archaic cast to his diction, still further to heighten the
effect. Lewis considered his version a masterpiece of translation, and,
indeed, "far superior, both in spirit and in harmony, to the German."
Taylor showed almost equal skill in his rendering of Buerger's next most
popular ballad, "Des Pfarrer's Tochter von Taubenhain," first printed in
the _Mont