University of Virginia Library

On the Raven's Rock a ruin stands,
Seen plainly from the lower lands.
Weeds grow thickly in the fosse;
Buttress and barbican hide in moss;
The hall is roofless, the chambers bare;
Ranpike trees in the court-yard there;
And over the riven and crumbling walls
The hungry ivy creeps and crawls.
Where knights and dames of high degree
Once moved with a lofty courtesy,
And minnesingers chanted free,
The toad and bat hold revelry;
And the tongues those blackened stones within
Speak less what is than what has been;
But over the gateway men may see,
Cut from the stone with chisel free,
In bold relief a knightly shield,
With a sable raven on silver field,
And a legend carved in a single line—
“True to the House of Rabenstein.”

The root whence grew a noble stem,
Sir Armeric von Heidenhemm,
Who gold and fame in the wars had won,
Came hither with his wife and son;
And once, when hunting on this rock,
A robber met in deadly lock—
A giant the knave, and brave and strong—
And the angry pair contended long.

The knight was stout, and never yet
One more his match than this had met,
And would his doom that day have found,
Had not a raven who hovered round—
His favorite for a year or so—
Driven his beak in the eyes of his foe,
Whose grip relaxed through sudden pain:
The knight was saved, the robber slain.
No wight more grateful was, they say
Than good Sir Armeric on that day.
He called the rock “The Raven Stone”;
He took that name in lieu of his own;
And there he built a castle tall,
With deep-cut moat and massive wall;
And wore a raven on his shield,
The sole device on its silver field;
And for his motto took the line—
“True to the House of Rabenstein.”

For he said—“If adverse fate assail,
Our house for lack of heirs should fail,
The Kaiser resume again his fee,
And our castle in ruins deserted be,
Forever through the varying year
One being of life shall linger here,
The sable symbol of our line
To guard the name of Rabenstein.”

Sir Armeric lived as live the just;
Sir Armeric's body passed to dust,
And his soul to heaven, all good men trust.
But from his loins there sprang a brood
Of knights and nobles stout and good;
And these through all the ages long
Found higher titles round them throng;
A thousand vassals at their call
Attended them in field or hall;
To them the base-born sons of toil
Paid rent-gold for the fertile soil
Extending widely on the Rhine,
And held in fee of their lordly line.
A noble race it was and proud,
And haughty to the common crowd;
But when the reigning counts rode out,
And with them rode their vassals stout,
Or sought the tourney's dangerous sport,
Or visited the Kaiser's court,
Or sat as guests at banquet splendid,
A tame black raven still attended;
And what a hawk or hound might be,
As favorite or companion free,
To others sprung from lordly stem,
That sable raven was to them.
Men still agreed that naught of base,
Or mean, or cruel marked the race;
But woe betide the scoffer heard
To jeer the black and awkward bird.
To other words they paid no heed—
Too proud to notice such indeed;
But he who held that raven light,
Upon their honor did despite;
And he who held that raven low,
Proclaimed himself the master's foe;
And on the offender fell condign
Wrath of the House of Rabenstein.

So past the years. At last there came
One godless noble of the name,
Truthless and ruthless, wild and grim,
A hundred vices met in him—
Rupert the Reckless—last of his line,
Cause of the fall of Rabenstein.

With boon companions left and right
Count Rupert reveled long one night;
With ribald jest and jeer profane,
The red wine firing blood and brain,
They shouted and screamed like madmen all,
Till the rafters shook in the oaken hall.
At length, in a frenzy, Rupert there
The raven seized that sat on the chair—
For such the custom of the line,
When its chief sat down to meat or wine—
And, wringing the helpless creature's neck,
Exclaimed—“With a thousand serfs at beck
To work our will or back our deed,
A better sign than this we need.
The raven's a loathly bird, we know,
Its voice is harsh, its habits low;
Too long it has been the baleful sign
That brought disgrace on a lordly line,
To every soaring thought a bar:
The eagle's a better bird by far.
We'll give him a place upon our shield—
An eagle shall soar on an azure field.
Fill your beakers with good red wine,
And toss them off, boon friends of mine,
To the new-made symbol of our line.
To Adlerstein we'll change our name,
Discard the raven and his shame—
Let the black bird elsewhere flutter and flit;
An eagle in his stead shall sit.
Fill high! drink deep, dear friends of mine,
A long farewell to Rabenstein.”

Three heavy knocks on the portals rang,
The great gates opened with a clang,
And a figure clad in links of steel,
In chain-cloth armed from head to heel,
Stalked to the head of the table where
Count Rupert shrank in his gilded chair.
The guests arose and fled, for they
Dared not with the dead at revel to stay;
And here were the first and last of the line,
The two dead counts of Rabenstein.

The body of Rupert rest has found
But not in consecrated ground;
Far in the forest where human eyes
So rarely rest, he mouldering lies;
While the stately home of his lordly race
Is the lizard's and bat's abiding-place;
And lest his fault forgotten be,
Or his name should pass from memory,
About the ruins by night and day
The race's raven is doomed to stay;
From stone to stone he hops and flits,
Or on some leafless limb he sits.
No one has ever heard him speak;
No one has known him to flesh his beak;
Mate of his kind he has never known—
In the ruined pile he dwells alone.
The hunter or boor who passes there
Signs the sign of the cross in the air;
For well he remembers the tale he heard
In early youth of the mystic bird;
And knows till the terrible Judgment Day,
The raven will haunt the place alway,
By day or night, through cloud or shine,
“True to the House of Rabenstein.”