Oh, blissful joy-filled moments, soon you go,
So like a dream, a sweetly fading tune.
Oh, paradise on earth we briefly know,
Why drive you forth your favoured ones so soon,
Your pleasures but a fleeting moment show?
Why give them bitter sorrow as your boon?
But does not briefest joy pain overthrow,
And blunt of life the sharpest anguish keen?
Be sure it does! If once true love we know,
Life's further joys or sorrows nothing mean-
Love only is remembered as we go,
Though we a lifetime naught but grief have seen.
While both the lovers felt a joy divine,
An evil presence in the lake close by
Looked in the window with a will malign,
A water snake-false Spidala's grim eye!
Soon marked Laimdota that the time was late,
She had to leave because the time had flown.
Bearslayer through the night resolved to wait;
Since he stood firm she took the path alone.
Bearslayer conquers demons and raises the Sunken Castle
Past midnight hour the castle grew so dank,
Bearslayer only warmed himself somehow,
By lighting in the hearth a broken plank.
He waited then for what would happen now.
In all the rooms a sudden whirlwind ran,
And seven demon fiends rushed through the door.
They bore a coffin with an ancient man,
Like scythes his teeth, like knives the nails he bore.
Although at first it seemed that he was dead,
He moved himself and uttered ghastly groans,
With opened eyes, "How cold I am!" he said.-
An unwished shudder gripped Bearslayer's bones.
He scarce could bear a voice so fearsome grim.
He banked the fire, then from the coffin's bounds,
Drew forth the man and said these words to him:
"Grow warm, you hell-hound, only-cease these sounds!"
But now the old man snarled, and tried to seize
And tear Bearslayer's ears with his sharp tooth.-
It seemed he knew Bearslayer's strength would ease,
So he could fight and overpower the youth.
Bearslayer struggling held him in the fire;
His hair was burning, but despite this plight,
Bearslayer swore: "No rescue from the pyre,
Until the castle rises to the light."
A noise was heard, and through the open door
Rushed Spidala the witch, and with her came
The seven demons who had come before,
With pitchforks armed, reflecting red the flame.
They fell upon Bearslayer one and all,
And with their forks they made to stab at him:
There at the fore-they answered to her call-
Came Spidala, her eyes aglitter grim.
Bearslayer was hard-pressed to face such odds,
Until of Staburadze's gift he thought
-The mirror that she gave him from the gods-
And from his clothes her magic glass he brought.
He held it out in Spidala's wild face,
And horrid wailing sounded in the gloom,
While all the demons shrank down in their place,
And spun like motes of dust about the room.