HACKELNBERG
I
When down the Hartz the echoes swarm,
He rides beneath the mountain storm
With mad “halloo!” and wild alarm
Of hound and horn and thunder:
With his hunter, black as night,
Ban-dogs, eyed with lambent light;
And a stag, a spectral white,
Rushes on before, in flight
Glimmering through the boughs and under.
II
Long-howling, crouched in bracken black,
The werewolf shuns his ruinous track,
On every side the forests crack,
And mountain torrents tumble:
And the spirits of the air
Whistling whirl with scattered hair,
Teeth that flash and eyes that glare,
Round him as he gallops there,
In the rain and tempest's rumble.
III
Above the storm, the thunder's growl,
The torrent's roar, the forest's howl,
Is heard his hunting-horn—an owl,
That hoots and sweeps before him:
And beneath the blinding leven,
On wild crags, the Castle riven
Of the Dumburg towers to heaven,
Beckoning on the demon-driven,
Beckoning on and looming o'er him.
