Classic Poem

CAPUT XVII

Like a lane there runs a valley
Which they call the Pass of Spirits.
Dizzy precipices bound it,
Rising ruggedly and sheer.

From that awful slope the hovel
Of Uraka, like a watch-tower,
Views the valley. Thither wending,
In Lascaro's wake I followed.

By a code of secret signals
He consulted with his mother
As to methods for enticing
And for slaying Atta Troll.

For, his trail with zeal pursuing,
We had tracked him down so surely,
That no loop-hole now was left him.
Atta Troll, thy days are numbered!

Whether old Uraka really
Was a witch of wondrous powers,
And as potent as the people
Of the Pyrenees asserted,

I will never try to settle;
But I know that her exterior
Was suspicious; most suspicious
Were her bloodshot eyes and rheumy.

Evil, squinting, were her glances.
If a cow, it was reported,
She but glanced at, on a sudden
Dried the milk within its udder.

They maintained that swine the fattest,
Nay, the strongest oxen even,
She could kill by merely stroking
With her wrinkled, bony fingers.

For such crimes they would accuse her
To the Justice of the peace;
But that worthy man, it happened,
Was a follower of Voltaire:

Just a modern, shallow worldling,
Neither pious nor profound,
Who would turn away the plaintiff,
Disbelieving, almost scoffing.

Quite an honest occupation
Was ostensibly Uraka's,
For she dealt in mountain-simples,
And the birds she stuffed for selling.

Full of specimens her hut was,
Vile with scent of cuckoo-flowers,
Mixed with rupture-wort and henbane
And with withered elder-blossom.

A collection, too, of vultures
Was most cleverly displayed,
With the pinions stretched for flying,
And the horrid monster beaks.

By the stupefying odour
Was my brain perhaps bewildered,
That I gazed upon the vultures
With an odd, uncanny feeling?

There are maybe men accursid
Pining, prisoned in the semblance
Of those stuffed, unhappy creatures,
Held in durance vile by magic.

With a look so fixed and mournful,
Yet impatient they regard me!
And I seem to see them squinting
At the witch with furtive glances.

But the witch, the old Uraka,
In the chimney-corner cowers,
Melting lead and casting bullets,
By her side her son Lascaro:

Casting fatal bullets destined
For the death of Atta Troll.
On the witch's face how swiftly
Dance the leaping flames, and quiver?

With her thin old lips she murmurs
Low and toneless, never pausing.
Is she crooning incantations
On the casting of the bullets?

To her son she nods and chuckles,
But, unmoved and unregarding
He pursues his work as grimly
And as silently as death. —

Filled with horror and misgiving
I approached the window, panting
For the air, and viewed the valley
Stretching far and wide below me.

What I saw that awful midnight,
'Twixt the hours of twelve and one,
I will tell you fairly, fitly,
In the chapter that shall follow.