HACKELNBERG.

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm

He rides beneath the sounding storm

With mad “halloo!” and wild alarm

Of hound and horn — a wonder,

With his hunter black as night,

Ban-dogs fleet and fast as light,

And a stag as silver white

Drives before, like mist, in flight,

Glimmering‘ neath the bursten thunder.

The were-wolf shuns his ruinous track,

Long-howling hid in braken black;

Around the forests reel and 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 chases there

With a noise of rains that rumble.

From thick Thuringian thickets growl

Fierce, fearful monsters black and foul;

And close before him a stritch-owl

Wails like a ghost unquiet:

Then the clouds aside are driven

And the moonlight, stormy striven.

Falls around the castle riven

Of the Dumburg, and the heaven

Maddens then with blacker riot.