"THE SECOND.
"'And as he sprang from the hound's hoarse laugh,
I branded him deep on the hide, piff, paff!'"
Where had the scamp learned to sing with such faithfulness to the sense? I heard plainly the "hound's hoarse laugh," the "piff, paff!" And again I wondered where he had learned to sing so true. Surely not from our leader; no Æolian harp about these manly, resounding notes:
"THE THIRD.
"'And as on the earth him slain I saw,
Lustily into the horn I blew, trara!'"
That "trara," like the blast of a hunting horn, transported me to my boyhood days in the Vaterland, where often I had heard the huntsmen call to each other in the thick forests and mountain glens.
And then mockingly came the stanza:
"So there they lay and bragged these three—
And there, ran by them the white deer—free!"
Surely the light-hearted boy, for boy he always has been to me, was meant for a minnesinger.