howl

'Tis midnight: the sky is with clouds overcast;
The forest-trees bend in the loud-rushing blast;
The rain strongly beats on these time-hallow'd spires;
The lightning pours swiftly its blue-pointed fires;
Triumphant the tempest-fiend rides in the dark,
And howls round the old abbey-walls of St. Mark!

The thunder, whose roaring the trav'ller appals,
Seems as if with the ground it would level the walls:
But in vain pours the storm-king this horrible rout;
The uproar within drowns the uproar without;

Es heult der Sturm, die Nacht ist graus,
Die Lampe schimmert im Müllerhaus.
Da schleichen drei Räuber wild und stumm -
Husch, husch, pist, pist! - ums Haus herum.
Die Müllerstochter spinnt allein,
Drei Räuber schaun zum Fenster herein.
Der zweite will Blut, der dritte will Gold,
Der erste, der ist dem Mädel hold.

The storm wind howls - a grisly night;
The lamp in the mill is twinkling bright.
Three robbers are sneaking, wild and still -
hush, hush, whist, whist! - around the mill.

Where we went in the boat was a long bay
a slingshot wide, walled in by towering stone--
Peaked margin of antiquity's delay,
And we went there out of time's monotone:

Where we went in the black hull no light moved
But a gull white-winged along the feckless wave,
The breeze, unseen but fierce as a body loved,
That boat drove onward like a willing slave:

Where we went in the small ship the seaweed
Parted and gave to us the murmuring shore
And we made feast and in our secret need

All the night in woe,
Lyca's parents go:
Over vallies deep.
While the desarts weep.

Tired and woe-begone.
Hoarse with making moan:
Arm in arm seven days.
They trac'd the desert ways.

Seven nights they sleep.
Among shadows deep:
And dream they see their child
Starvdd in desart wild.

Pale thro' pathless ways
The fancied image strays.
Famish'd, weeping, weak
With hollow piteous shriek

Rising from unrest,
The trembling woman prest,
With feet of weary woe;

Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand
   Attests to a deed of hell;
But of else than of bale is the mystic tale
   That ancient Vale-folk tell.

Ere Cernel's Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest,
   (In later life sub-prior
Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare
   In the field that was Cernel choir).

One night in his cell at the foot of yon dell
   The priest heard a frequent cry:
"Go, father, in haste to the cot on the waste,

Mount -- mount for the hunting -- with musket and spear!
Call our friends to the field -- for the Lion is near!
Call Arend and Ekhard and Groepe to the spoor;
Call Muller and Coetzer and Lucas Van Vuur.

Ride up Eildon-Cleugh, and blow loudly the bugle:
Call Slinger and Allie and Dikkop and Dugal;
And George with the elephant-gun on his shoulder --
In a perilous pinch none is better or bolder.

In the gorge of the glen lie the bones of my steed,
And the hoofs of a heifer of fatherland's breed:

The ladye she stood at her lattice high,
Wi' her doggie at her feet;
Thorough the lattice she can spy
The passers in the street,

'There's one that standeth at the door,
And tirleth at the pin:
Now speak and say, my popinjay,
If I sall let him in.'

Then up and spake the popinjay
That flew abune her head:
'Gae let him in that tirls the pin:
He cometh thee to wed.'

O when he cam' the parlour in,
A woeful man was he!
'And dinna ye ken your lover agen,
Sae well that loveth thee?'

Fit the First
THE LANDING

'Just the place for a Snark!' the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

'Just the place for a Snark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Snark! I have said it thrice:
What i tell you three times is true.'

The crew was complete: it included a Boots--
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods--
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes--

The wrathful winter, 'proaching on apace,
With blustering blasts had all ybar'd the treen,
And old Saturnus, with his frosty face,
With chilling cold had pierc'd the tender green;
The mantles rent, wherein enwrapped been
The gladsome groves that now lay overthrown,
The tapets torn, and every bloom down blown.

The soil, that erst so seemly was to seen,
Was all despoiled of her beauty's hue;
And soote fresh flowers, wherewith the summer's queen
Had clad the earth, now Boreas' blasts down blew;

Pray why are you so bare, so bare,
Oh, bough of the old oak-tree;
And why, when I go through the shade you throw,
Runs a shudder over me?
My leaves were green as the best, I trow,
And sap ran free in my veins,
But I say in the moonlight dim and weird
A guiltless victim's pains.
They'd charged him with the old, old crime,
And set him fast in jail:
Oh, why does the dog howl all night long,
And why does the night wind wail?
He prayed his prayer and he swore his oath,