THE FORGE:

A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE.

"Who's here, beside foul weather?"-KING LEAR.

"Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me,

Should have stood that night against my fire."- CORDELIA.

PART I.

LIKE a dead man gone to his shroud,
The sun has sunk in a coppery cloud,

And the wind is rising squally and loud
With many a stormy token,-
Playing a wild funereal air,

Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there-
In short, if the truth were spoken,

It's an ugly one for anywhere,

But an awful night for the Brocken.

For, O! to stop

On that mountain top,

After the dews of evening drop,

Is always a dreary frolic

Then what must it be when Nature groans,
And the very mountain murmurs and moans
As if it writhed with the colic

With other strange supernatural tones,
From wood, and water, and echoing stones,
Not to forget unburied bones-

In a region so diabolic!

A place where he whom we call Old Scratch,
By help of his Witches a precious batch---

Gives midnight concerts and sermons, In a pulpit and orchestra built to match A plot right worthy of him to hatch, And well adapted, he knows, to catch The musical, mystical Germans!

However, it's quite

As wild a night

As ever was known on that sinister height
Since the Demon-Dance was morriced
The earth is dark, and the sky is scowling,

And the blast through the pines is howling and growling, As if a thousand wolves were prowling

About in the old BLACK FOREST!

Madly, sadly, the tempest raves

Through the narrow gulleys and hollow caves,
And bursts on the rocks in windy waves.

Like the billows that roar

On a gusty shore

Mourning over the mariners' graves
Nay, more like a frantic lamentation
From a howling set

Of demons met

To wake a dead relation.

Badly, madly, the vapors fly
Over the dark distracted sky,

At a pace that no pen can paint!
Black and vague like the shadows of dreams,
Scudding over the moon that seems

Shorn of half her usual beams,

As pale as if she would faint!

The lightning flashes,
The thunder crashes,

The trees encounter with horrible clashes,
While rolling up from marish and bog,
Rank and rich,

As from Stygian ditch,

Rises a foul sulphureous fog,
Hinting that Satan himself is agog,-
But, leaving at once this heroical pitch,
The night is a very bad night, in which
You would n't turn out a dog.

Yet ONE there is abroad in the storm,
And whenever by chance

The moon gets a glance,

She spies the traveller's lonely form,
Walking, leaping, striding along,

As none can do but the super-strong;
And flapping his arms to keep him warm,
For the breeze from the north is a regular starver,
And, to tell the truth,

More keen, in sooth,

And cutting than any German carver!

However, no time it is to lag;

And on he scrambles from crag to crag,

Like one determined never to flag-
Now weathers a block

Of jutting rock,

With hardly room for a toe to wag;
But holding on by a timber-snag,

That looks like the arm of a friendly hag;
Then stooping under a drooping bough,
Or leaping over some horrid chasm,
Enough to give any heart a spasm!

And sinking down a precipice now
Keeping his feet the Deuce knows how,

In spots whence all creatures would keep aloof,
Except the goat, with his cloven hoof,

Who clings to the shallowest ledge as if

He grew like the weed on the face of the cliff!
So down, still down, the traveller goes,
Safe as the chamois amid his snows,

Though fiercer than ever the hurricane blows,
And round him eddy, with whirl and whizz,
Tornadoes of hail, and sleet, and rain,
Enough to bewilder a weaker brain,

Or blanch any other visage than his,
Which, spite of lightning, thunder, and hail,
The blinding sleet, and the freezing gale,
And the horrid abyss,

If his foot should miss,

Instead of tending at all to pale,

Like cheeks that feel the chill of affright
Remains the very reverse of white!

His heart is granite

his iron nerve

Feels no convulsive twitches;

And as to his foot, it does not swerve,

Though the screech-owls are flitting about him that serve

For parrots to Brocken Witches!

Nay, full in his very path he spies

The gleam of the wehr wolf's horrid eyes:

But if his members quiver

no, it is not for that

Nor rat, nor cat, as black as your hat,

Nor the snake that hissed, nor the toad that spat,
Nor glimmering candles of dead men's fat,

Nor even the flap of the vampire bat,

No anserine skin would rise thereat,

It's the cold that makes Him shiver!

So down, still down, through gully and glen,
Never trodden by foot of men,

Past the eagle's nest, and the she-wolf's den,
Never caring a jot how steep

Or how narrow the track he has to keep,
Or how wide and deep

An abyss to leap,

Or what may fly, or walk, or creep,
Down he hurries through darkness and storm,
Flapping his arms to keep him warm
Till, threading many a pass abhorrent,
At last he reaches the mountain gorge,
And takes a path along by a torrent-

The very identical path, by St. George!
Down which young Fridolin went to the Forge,
With a message meant for his own death-warrant !
Young Fridolin ! young Fridolin!

So free from sauce, and sloth, and sin,
The best of pages,

Whatever their

ages,

Since first that singular fashion came in

Not he like those modern and idle young gluttons With little jackets, so smart and spruce,

Of Lincoln green, sky-blue, or puce

And a little gold-lace you may introduce -
Very showy, but as for use,

Not worth so many buttons!

Young Fridolin! young Fridolin !

Of his duty so true a fulfiller

But here we need no further go,

For whoever desires the tale to know

May read it all in Schiller.

Faster now the traveller speeds,

Whither his guiding beacon leads,