And as my heart is beating,
My crystal castle doth ring;
The knights and maidens are dancing,
The squires all-joyfully spring.
The silken trains are rustling,
The spurs of iron are worn,
The dwarfs beat drum and trumpet,
And fiddle and play the horn.
But thee shall my arm hold warmly
As Kaiser Henry it held;
I held him fast imprison’d,
When loudly the trumpet’s note swell’d.
THE BALTIC.
PART I. 1825.
1. EVENING TWILIGHT.
By ocean’s pallid strand
Sat I, tormented in spirit and lonely.
The sun sank lower and lower, and threw
Red glowing streaks upon the water,
And the snowy, spreading billows,
By the flood hard-press’d,
Foam’d and roar’d still nearer and nearer—
A wonderful sound, a whisp’ring and piping,
A laughing and murmuring, sighing and rushing,
Between times a lullaby-home-sounding singing,—
Methinks I hear some olden tradition,
Primeval, favourite legend,
Which I erst as a stripling
Learnt from the neighbours’ children,
When we, on the summer evenings,
On the house-door’s steps all cower’d
Cosily for quiet talking,
With our little hearts all attentive,
And our eyes all wisely curious;—
Whilst the bigger maidens,
Close by their fragrant flowerpots
Sat at the opposite window
Rosy their faces,
Smiling, illumed by the moon.
2. SUNSET.
The glowing ruddy sun descends
Down to the far up-shuddering
Silvery-grey world-ocean;
Airy images, rosily breath’d upon,
After him roll, and over against him,
Out of the’ autumnal glimmering veil of clouds,
With face all mournful and pale as death,
Bursteth forth the moon,
And behind her, like sparks of light,
Misty-broad, glimmer the stars.
Once in the heavens there glitter’d,
Join’d in fond union,
Luna the goddess and Sol the god,
And around them the stars all cluster’d,
Their little, innocent children.