What a scene for some great imaginative work! What a mocking interference of the wrath of nature in the puny contests of men! One stroke of “the red right arm” above us, crushing the triumph of ages, and laughing to scorn the power of the beleaguers and the valour of the besieged!
They passed the whole day among these stupendous ruins, and felt, when they descended to their inn, as if they had left the caverns of some mighty tomb.
CHAPTER XXX. NO PART OF THE EARTH REALLY SOLITARY.—THE SONG OF THE
FAIRIES.—THE SACRED SPOT.—THE WITCH OF THE EVIL WINDS.—THE SPELL AND THE DUTY OF THE FAIRIES.
BUT in what spot of the world is there ever utter solitude? The vanity of man supposes that loneliness is his absence! Who shall say what millions of spiritual beings glide invisibly among scenes apparently the most deserted? Or what know we of our own mechanism, that we should deny the possibility of life and motion to things that we cannot ourselves recognize?
At moonlight, in the Great Court of Heidelberg, on the borders of the shattered basin overgrown with weeds, the following song was heard by the melancholy shades that roam at night through the mouldering halls of old, and the gloomy hollows in the mountain of Heidelberg.
SONG OF THE FAIRIES IN THE RUINS OF HEIDELBERG.
From the woods and the glossy green,
With the wild thyme strewn;
From the rivers whose crisped sheen
Is kissed by the trembling moon;
While the dwarf looks out from his mountain cave,
And the erl king from his lair,
And the water-nymph from her moaning wave,
We skirr the limber air.
There’s a smile on the vine-clad shore,
A smile on the castled heights;
They dream back the days of yore,
And they smile at our roundel rites!
Our roundel rites!
Lightly we tread these halls around,
Lightly tread we;
Yet, hark! we have scared with a single sound
The moping owl on the breathless tree,
And the goblin sprites!
Ha, ha! we have scared with a single sound
The old gray owl on the breathless tree,
And the goblin sprites!
“They come not,” said Pipalee; “yet the banquet is prepared, and the poor queen will be glad of some refreshment.”