The Lay of the Stork :: :: University of Virginia Library

The Lay of the Stork

By Miss Louisa Stuart Costello

Costello, Louisa Stuart (1799-1870)

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INTRODUCTION.

THE LAY OF THE STORK.

II.

III.

THE SONG OF THE ARABS.

IV.

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Sunset! on the plain that spreads
Onward to the glowing Rhine:
Sunset on the purple heads
Of Alsatia's

Alsatia.—“Alsace est l'ancien pays des Tribocs dont il est parlé chez César, Strabon, Ptolomée et Ammian, et dont Stras-bourg ou Argentine, a été faite capital. B. Rhenanus dit que le nom d'Alsace est nouveau et il veut qu'il ait commencé sous le regne de Charlemagne qui en parle dans une charte pour le Prieuré du Val de Liévre sous le nom de Pagus Alsaticus. Jacques Chiflet soùtient que cette province emprunte son nom de la rivière d'Elle, d'où on a formé le mot latin Elsatia, Elisatium, Alisatium.”—(Origine de la Maison de Lorraine. 1704. A Toul.)

mountain line:
Red sunset on the vines that creep,
Far along the rocky steep,
Till those giant forests rise
Dark against the clear, broad skies,
All streak'd and fleck'd with sunset's glow,
Down to the river's banks below.

Silver Neckar! crimson'd o'er
With the beam, from shore to shore,

Silver Neckar! devious still,
Doubling, turning at thy will,
Circling through the meadows' maze,
Joyous in the golden blaze,
Till thy waters, full and free
Swell the Rhine's majestic sea.

Odenwald! in misty grey
Fade thy crowding heights away:
But fair Heidelberg stands out,
All her ruins girt about
With a diadem of gold,
Such as crown'd her once of old,
When two royal lovers stood,

The Elector Frederic the Fifth, and Elizabeth of England, of whose attachment and misfortunes every stone of the Castle of Heidelberg is a relic.

Gazing from this charmèd grove,
Blest in tender solitude,
Till ambition conquered love.

Velleda!

Keysler says, “Velleda was celebrated as a prophetess amongst the Germans. Tacitus names her and Auriniæ as objects of worship in the time of Vespasian. Women were believed, by the ancient Germans, to possess the gift of prophecy. The priestess Jettha dwelt in a temple, some fragments of which still existed when Frederic built the new palace of Heidelberg.” The name of the mountain has been derived from its Pagan temple (Heiden) by the learned: the peasantry derive it from the bilberries with which it abounds: Heidel.

prophetess, whose fane
Gave place to these abodes of joy,
Didst thou foretel—alas!—in vain!
What fate their glories should destroy,

And this fair temple be as lone
As desolate,—as erst thy own?
Ah! in the changes wrought by Time,
Whose sullen waves roll fiercely on,
What boots, amidst his course sublime,
A race of Kings—or Prophets—gone!