Robert Browning.
While the parents stood there helpless and spellbound, the piper led the children out of the town to the Koppelberg, a hill, which miraculously opened to receive them, and only closed again when the last child had passed out of sight. The children were never seen in Hamelin again, and in commemoration of this public calamity all official decrees have since been dated so many years after the Pied Piper’s visit.
“They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,
‘And so long after what happened here
On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six.’
And the better in memory to fix