He? why, a tall Franconian strong and young,
Brown as a walnut the first frost hath hulled;
A soul of full endeavor powerful
Bound in lithe limbs, knit into grace and strength
Of bronze-like muscles elegant, that poised
A head like Hope's; and then the manly lines
Of face developed by action and mobile
To each suggestive impulse of the mind,
Of smiles of buoyancy or scowls of gloom.--
And what deep eyes were his!--Aye; I can see
Their wild and restless disks of luminous night
Instinct with haughtiness that sneered at Fate,
Glared cold conclusion to all circumstance,
As with loud law, to his advantage swift:
With scorn derisive that shot out a barb,
Stabbed Superstition to its dagger hilt;
That smiled a thrust-like smile which curled the lip,
A vicious heresy with incredible lore,
When God's or holy Mary's name came forth
Exclaimed in reverence or astonishment;
And then would say,
"What is this God you mouth,
Employ whose name to sanctify and damn?--
A benedictive curse?--'T hath past my skill
Of grave interpretation. And your faith--
Distinguishment unseen, design unlawed.
For earth, air, fire or water or keen cold,
Hints no existence of such, worships not,
Such as men's minds profess. Rather, meseems,
Throned have they one such as their hopes have wrought
In hope there may prove such an one in death
For Paradise or punishment. I hold
He juster were and would be kinglier kind
In sovereign mercy and a prodigal--
Not to few favored heads who, crowned with state,
Rule sceptered Infamies--of indulgence free
To all that burn luxuriant incense on
Shrines while they prayer him love's obedience.
Are all not children of the same weak mold?
Clay of His Adam-modeled clay made quick?
Endowed with the like hopes, loves, fears and hates,
Our mother's weaknesses? And these, forsooth,
These little crowns that lord it o'er His world,
Tricked up with imitative majesty,
God-countenanced arrogances, throned may still
Cry, 'crawl and worship, for we are as gods
Through God! great gods incarnate of his kind!'
--Omnipotent Wrong-representatives!
With might that blasts the world with wars and wrings
Groans from pale Nations with hell's tyranny.
So to my mind real monarch only he--
Your Satan cramped in Hell!--aye, by the fiend!
To pygmy Earth's frail tinsel majesties,
That ape a God in a sonorous Heaven.
Grant me the Devil in all mercy then,
For I will none of such! a fiend for friend
While Earth is of the earth; and afterward--
Nay! ransack not To-morrow till To-day,
If all that's joy engulf you when it is."
And laughed an oily laugh of easy jest
To bow out God and hand the Devil in.--
I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring,
Toward the close of April when the Harz,
Veined to their ruin-crested summits, pulsed
A fluid life of green and budded gold
Beneath pure breathing skies of boundless blue:
Where low-yoked oxen, yellow to the knees,
Along the fluted meadow, freshly ploughed,
Plodded and snuffed the fragrance of the soil,
The free bird sang exultant in the sun.
Triumphant Spring with hinted hopes of May
And jaunty June, her mouth a puckered rose.
Here at this very hostelery o' The Owl;
Mine host there sleek served cannikins of wine
Beneath that elm now touseled by that shrew,
Lean Winter. Well!--a lordly vintage that!
With tang of fires which had sucked out their soul
From feverish sun-vats, cooled it from the moon's;
From wine-skin bellies of the bursting grape
Trodden, in darkness of old cellars aged
Even to the tingling smack of olden earth.
Rich! I remember!--wine that spurred the blood--
Thou hast none such, I swear, nor wilt again!--
That brought the heart loud to the generous mouth,
And made the eyes unlatticed casements whence
The good man's soul laughed interested out.
Stoups of rare royal Rhenish, such they say
As Necromance hides guarded in vast casks
Of antique make far in the Kyffhäuser,
The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf.
So, mellowed by that wine to friendship frank,
He spake me his intent in coming here;
But not one word of what his parentage;
But this his name was, Rudolf, and his home,
Franconia; but nor why he left nor when:
His mind to live a forester and be
Enfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's train
Of buff and green; and so to his estate
Even now was bound, a youth of twenty-three.
And when he ceased the fire in his eyes
Worked restless as a troubled animal's,
Which hate-enraged can burn a steady flame,
Brute merciless. And thus I mused with me,
When he had ceased to fulminate at state,
"Another Count von Hackelnburg the fiend
Hath tricked unto the chase!--for hounds from Hell?"
But answered nothing, save light words of cheer
As best become fleet friends warm wine doth make.
Then as it chanced, old Kurt had come that morn
With some six of his jerkined foresters
From the Thuringian forest; damp with dew;
Red-cheeked as morn with early travel; bound
For Brunswick, Dummburg and the Hakel passed.
Chief huntsman he then to the goodly Duke,
And father of the sunniest maiden here
In Ammendorf, the blameless Ilsabe;
Who, motherless, the white-haired father prized
A jewel priceless. As huge barons' ghosts
Guard big, accumulated hoards of wealth,
Fast-sealed in caverned cellars, robber wells,
Beneath the dungeoned Dummburg, so he watched
Her, all his world in her who was his wealth.
A second Lora of Thuringia she.
Faultless for love, instilled all souls with love,
Who, in the favor of her maiden smile,
Felt friendship grow up like a golden thought;
A life of love from words; and light that fell
And wrought calm influence from her pure blue eyes.
Hair sedate and austerely dressed o'er brows
White as a Harz dove's wing; hair with the hue
Of twilight mists the sun hath soaked with gold.
A Tyrolean melody that brought
Dim dreams of Alpine heights, of shepherds brown,
Goat-skinned, with healthy cheeks and wrinkled lips
That fill wild oaten pipes on wand'ring ways,
Embowered deep, with mountain melodies,--
Simple with love and plaintive even to tears,--
Her presence, her sweet presence like a song.
And when she left, it was as when one hath
Beheld a moonlit Undine, ere the mind
Adjusts one thought, cleave thro' the glassy Rhine
A glittering beauty wet, and gone again
A flash--the soul drifts wondering on in dreams.
Some thirty years agone is that; and I,
Commissioner of the Duke--no sinecure
I can assure you--had scarce reached the age
Of thirty (then some three years of that House).
Thro' me the bold Franconian, whom at first,
By bitter principles and scorn of state--
Developed into argument thro' wine--
The foresthood like was to be denied,
Was then enfellowed. "Yes," I said, "he's young;
True, rashly young! yet, see: a wiry frame,
A chamois' footing, and a face for right;
An eye which likes me not, but quick with pride,
And aimed at thought, a butt it may not miss:
A soul with virgin virtues which crude flesh
Makes seem but vices, these but God may see--
Develop these. But, if there's aught of worth,
Body or mind, in him, Kurt, thou wilt know,
And to the surface wear, as divers win
From hideous ooze and life rich jewels lost
Of polished pureness, worthless left to night,
Thou or thy daughter, and inspire for good."
A year thereafter was it that I heard
Of Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe,
Then their betrothal. And it was from this,--
For, ah, that Ilsabe! that Ilsabe!--
Good Mary Mother! how she haunts me yet!
She, that true touchstone which philosophers feign
Contacts and golds all base; a woman who
Could touch all evil into good in man.--
Surmised I of the excellency which
Refinement of her gentle company,
Warm presence of chaste beauty, had resolved
His fiery nature to, conditioning slave.
And so I came from Brunswick--as you know--
Is custom of the Duke or, by his seal
Commissioned proxy, his commissioner,--
To test the marksmanship of Rudolf who
Succeeded Kurt with marriage of his child,
An heir of Kuno.--He?--Great grandfather
Of Kurt, and one this forestkeepership
Was first possesor of; established thus--
Or such the tale they told me 'round the hearths.
Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train,
Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who came
With vast magnificence of knights and hounds,
And satin-tuniced nobles curled and plumed
To hunt Thuringian deer. Then Morn too slow
On her blithe feet was; quick with laughing eyes
To morrow mortal eyes and lazy limbs;
Rather on tip-toed hills recumbent yawned,
Aroused an hour too soon; ashamed, disrobed,
Rubbed the stiff sleep from eyes that still would close,
While brayed the hollow horns and bayed lean hounds,
And cheered gallants until the dingles dinned,
Where searched the climbing mists or, compact light,
Fled breathless white, clung scared a moted gray,
Low unsunned cloudlands of the castled hills.
And then near mid-noon from a swarthy brake
The ban-dogs roused a red gigantic stag,
Lashed to whose back with grinding knotted cords,
Borne with whom like a nightmare's incubus,
A man shrieked; burry-bearded and his hair
Kinked with dry, tangled burrs, and he himself
Emaciated and half naked. From
The wear of wildest passage thro' the wild,
Rent red by briars, torn and bruised by rocks.
--For, such the law then, when the peasant chased
Or slew the dun deer of his tyrant lords,
As punishment the torturing withes and spine
Of some big stag, a gift of game and wild
Enough till death--death in the antlered herd
Or crawling famine in bleak, haggard haunts.
Then was the dark Duke glad, and forthwith cried
To all his dewy train a rich reward
For him who slew the stag and saved the man,
But death to him who slew the man and stag,
The careless error of a loose attempt.
So crashed the hunt along wild, glimmering ways
Thro' creepers and vast brush beneath gnarled trees,
Up a scorched torrent's bed. Yet still refused
Each that sure shot; the risk too desperate
The poor life and the golden gift beside.
So this young Kuno with two eyes wherein
Hunt with excitement kindled reckless fire
Clamored, "And are ye cowards?--Good your grace,
You shall not chafe!--The fiend direct my ball!"
And fired into a covert deeply packed,
An intertangled wall of matted night,
Wherein the eye might vainly strive and strive
To pierce one foot or earn one point beyond.
But, ha! the huge stag staggered from the brake
Heart-hit and perished. That wan wretch unhurt
Soon bondless lay condoled. But the great Duke,
Charmed with the eagle shot, admired the youth,
There to him and his heirs forever gave
The forest keepership.
But envious tongues
Were soon at wag; and whispered went the tale
Of how the shot was free, and that the balls
Used by young Kuno were free bullets, which
Molded were cast in influence of 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
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 of Rudolf's skill postponed, with which
Annoyed he seemed. And so it was I heard
How he an execrable marksman was,
And whispered tales of near, incredible shots
That wryed their mark, while in his flint-lock's pan
Flashed often harmless powder, while wild game
Stared fearless on him and indulgent stood,
An open butt to such wide marksmanship.
Howbeit, he that day acquitted him
Of these maligners' cavils; in the hunt
Missing no shot however rash he made
Or distant thro' thick intercepting trees;
And the piled, curious game brought down of all
Good marksmen of that train had not sufficed,
Doubled, nay, trebled, to have matched his heap.
And wonderstruck the _jägers_ saw, nor knew
How to excuse them. My indulgence giv'n,
Still swore that only yesterday old Kurt
Had touched his daughter's tears and Rudolf's wrath
By vowing end to their betrothéd love,
Unless that love developed better aim
Against the morrow's test; his ancestor's
High fame should not be damaged. So he stormed,
But bowed his gray head and wept silently;
Then looking up forgave when big he saw
Tears in his daughter's eyes and Rudolf gone
Forth in the night that wailed with coming storm.
Before this inn, The Owl, assembled came
The nice-primped villagers to view the trial:
Fair _fräuleins_ and blonde, comely, healthy _fraus_;
Stout burgers. And among them I did mark
Kurt and his daughter. He, a florid face
Of pride and joy for Rudolf's strange success;
She, radiant and flounced in flowing garb
Of bridal white deep-draped and crowned with flowers;
For Kurt insisted this their marriage eve
Should Rudolf come successful from the chase.
So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do,
The test of skill superfluous seemed and so
Was on the bare brink of announcement, when,
Out of the evening heaven's hardening red,
Like a white warning loosed for augury,
A word of God some fallen angel prized
As his last all of heaven, penitent,
Hell-freed, sent minister to save a soul,
A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there,
A wafted waif, pruned settled on a bough:
Then I, "Thy weapon, Rudolph, pierce its head!"
Cried pointing, "And chief-forester art thou!"
Pale as a mist and wavering he turned;
"I had a dream--" then faltered as he aimed,
"A woman's whim!" But starting from the press
Screamed Ilsabe, "My dove!" to plead its life
Came--cracked the rifle and untouched the dove
Rose beating lustrous wings, but Ilsabe--
"God's wrath! the sight!"--fell smitten, and the blood
Sprang red from shattered brow and silent hair--
That bullet strangely thro' her brow and brain....
And what of Rudolf? ah! of him you ask?
That proud Franconian who would scoff at Fate
And scorn all state; who cried black Satan friend
Sooner than our white Christ;--why, he went mad
O' the moment, and into the haunted Harz
Fled, an unholy thing, and perished there
The prey of demons of the Dummburg. But
I one of few less superstitious who
Say, as the finale of a madman's deed,
He in the Bodé, from that ragged rock,
The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die.
