"How glumly sounds yon dirge-like song, Night-ravens flap the wing;

What knell doth slowly toll ding dong?
The psalms of death who sing?

"It creeps, the swarthy funeral train, The corpse is on the bier;

Like croak of toads from lonely moors,

The chant doth meet the ear.

Go, bear her corpse when midnight's past,
With song, and tear, and wail;

I've got my wife, I take her home,
My hour of wedlock hail.

"Lead forth, O clerk, the chanting quire, To swell our nuptial song ;

Come, priest, and read the blessing soon,
For rest, for rest we long."-

They heed his call, and hushed the sound,

The bier was seen no more;

And followed him o'er field and flood,
Yet faster than before.

Halloo! halloo ! away they go,

Unheeding wet or dry;

And horse and rider snort and blow,
And sparkling pebbles fly.

F

How swift the hill, how swift the dale,
Aright, aleft, are gone;

By hedge and tree, by thorp and town,
They gallop, gallop on.

Tramp, tramp, across the land they speed,
Splash, splash, across the sea;
"Hurrah! the dead can ride apace;
Dost fear to ride with me?

"Look up, look up, an airy crew,
In roundel dances reel;

The moon is bright, and blue the night,
May'st dimly see them wheel.

"Come to, come to, ye ghostly crew,
Come to, and follow me,

And dance for us the wedding dance,
When we at rest shall be."-

And brush, brush, brush, the ghostly crew
Come wheeling o'er their heads,
All rustling like the withered leaves
That wide the whirlwind spreads.

Halloo! halloo ! away they go,
Unheeding wet or dry;

And horse and rider snort and blow,
And sparkling pebbles fly.

And all that in the moonshine lay,
Behind them fled afar;

And backward scudded overhead,

The sky and every star.

Tramp, tramp, across the land they speed,
Splash, splash, across the sea;
“Hurrah! the dead can ride apace;
Dost fear to ride with me?

"I ween the cock prepares to crow, The sand will soon be run;

I snuff the early morning air,

Down, down! our work is done.

“The dead, the dead can ride apace,
Our wed bed here is sit;
Our race is rid, our journey o'er,
Our endless union knit.".

And lo! an iron grated gate

Soon biggens to their view;

He cracked his whip; the clanging bolts, The doors asunder flew.

They pass, and 'twas on graves they trod; "Tis hither we are bound;

And many a tombstone ghostly white
Lay in the moonshine round.

And when he from his steed alit,
His armour, green with rust,
Which damps of charnel vaults had bred,
Straight fell away to dust.

His head became a naked skull,
Nor hair nor eyes had he;
His body grew a skeleton,
Whilome so blythe of blee.

And at his dry and bony heel
No spur was left to be;

And in his withered hand you might
The scythe and hour glass see.

And lo! his steed did thin to smoke,
And charnel fires outbreathe;

And paled, and bleached, then vanished quite
The maid from underneath.

And hollow howlings hung in air,

And shrieks from vaults arose;
Then knew the maid she might no more
Her living eyes unclose.

But onward to the judgment-seat,
Through mist and moonlight drear:

The ghostly crew their flight pursue,
And hollo in her ear:

"Be patient, though thine heart should break,

Arraign not Heaven's decree;

Thou now art of thy body reft,

Thy soul forgiven be ! "

From the German of Bürger.

XXVIII

ADELGITHA.

The ordeal's fatal trumpet sounded,
And sad pale Adelgitha came,
When forth a valiant champion bounded,
And slew the slanderer of her fame.

She wept, delivered from her danger;

But when he knelt to claim her glove — "Seek not," she cried, "oh gallant stranger, For hapless Adelgitha's love.

"For he is in a foreign far land

Whose arms should now have set me free,
And I must wear the willow garland
For him that's dead or false to me."

"Nay! say not that his faith is tainted!
He raised his vizor. at the sight
She fell into his arms and fainted;
It was indeed her own true knight !

CAMPBELL.