For by yonder glare
In the murky air,

He knows that the Eisen Hutte is there!
With its sooty Cyclops, savage and grim,
Hosts a guest had better forbear,

Whose thoughts are set upon dainty fare-
But, stiff with cold in every limb,

The furnace fire is the bait for Him!
Faster and faster still he goes,

Whilst redder and redder the welkin glows,
And the lowest clouds that scud in the sky
Get crimson fringes in flitting by.
Till, lo! amid the lurid light,

The darkest object intensely dark,
Just where the bright is intensely bright,
The Forge, the Forge itself is in sight,
Like the pitch-black hull of a burning bark,
With volleying smoke, and many a spark,
Vomiting fire, red, yellow, and white!

Restless, quivering tongues of flame!
Heavenward striving still to go,

While others, reversed in the stream below,
Seem seeking a place we will not name,
But well that traveller knows the same,
Who stops and stands,
So rubbing his hands,
And snuffing the rare
Perfumes in the air,

For old familiar odors are there,
And then direct by the shortest cut,
Like Alpine marmot, whom neither rut,

Rivers, rocks, nor thickets rebut,
Makes his way to the blazing hut!

PART II.

Idly watching the furnace-flames,
The men of the stithy

Are in their smithy,

Brutal monsters, with bulky frames,
Beings Humanity scarcely claims,
But hybrids rather of demon race,
Unblessed by the holy rite of grace,
Who never had gone by Christian names,
Mark, or Matthew, Peter, or James -
Naked, foul, unshorn, unkempt,

From touch of natural shame exempt,
Things of which Delirium has dreamt
But wherefore dwell on these verbal sketches,
When traced with frightful truth and vigor,
Costume, attitude, face, and figure,
Retsch has drawn the very wretches!

However, there they lounge about,

The grim, gigantic fellows,

Hardly hearing the storm without,
That makes so very dreadful a rout,
For the constant roar

From the furnace door,

And the blast of the monstrous bellows '

O, what a scene

That Forge had been

For Salvator Rosa's study!

With wall, and beam, and post, and pin,

And those ruffianly creatures, like Shapes of Sin!

Hair, and eyes, and rusty skin;

Illumed by a light so ruddy,

The hut, and whatever there is therein,

Looks either red-hot or bloody!

And, O! to hear the frequent burst
Of strange extravagant laughter,
Harsh and hoarse,

And resounding perforce
From echoing roof and rafter!
Though curses, the worst

That ever were curst,

And threats that Cain invented the first,
Come growling the instant after!

But again the livelier peal is rung,

For the Smith-hight Salamander, In the jargon of some Titanic tongue, Elsewhere never said or sung,

With the voice of a Stentor in joke has flung Some cumbrous sort

Of sledge-hammer retort

At Red-Beard, the crew's commander.

Some frightful jest who knows how wild,

Or obscene, from a monster so defiled,
And a horrible mouth, of such extent,
From flapping ear to ear it went,

And showed such tusks whenever it smiled

The very mouth to devour a child!

But fair or foul, the jest gives birth
To another bellow of demon mirth,

That far outroars the weather,
As if all the hyenas that prowl the earth
Had clubbed their laughs together!

And, lo! in the middle of all the din,
Not seeming to care a single pin,
For a prospect so volcanic,

A stranger steps abruptly in,

Of an aspect rather Satanic:

And he looks, with a grin, at those Cyclops grim, Who stare and grin again at him

With wondrous little panic.

Then up to the furnace the stranger goes,

Eager to thaw his ears and nose,

And warm his frozen fingers and toes

While each succeeding minute

Hotter and hotter the smithy grows,
And seems to declare,

By a fiercer glare,

On wall, roof, floor, and everywhere,
It knows the Devil is in it!

Still not a word

Is uttered or heard,

But the beetle-browed foreman nods and winks, Much as a shaggy old lion blinks,

And makes a shift

To impart his drift

To a smoky brother, who, joining the links,
Hints to a third the thing he thinks;

And whatever it be,

They all agree

In smiling with faces full of glee,

As if about to enjoy high jinks.
What sort of tricks they mean to play
By way of diversion, who can say,
Of such ferocious and barbarous folk,
Who chuckled, indeed, and never spoke
Of burning Robert the Jäger to coke,
Except as a capital practical joke!

Who never thought of Mercy, or heard her
Or any gentle emotion felt:

But, hard as the iron they had to melt,
Sported with Danger and romped with Murder!

Meanwhile the stranger,

The Brocken Ranger,

Besides another and hotter post,

That renders him not averse to a roast,

Creeping into the furnace almost,
Has made himself as warm as a toast
When, unsuspicious of any danger,
And least of all of any such maggot
As treating his body like a fagot,
All at once he is seized and shoven
In pastime cruel,

Like so much fuel,

Headlong into the blazing oven!

In he goes with a frightful shout Mocked by the rugged ruffianly band, As round the furnace mouth they stand, Bar, and shovel, and ladle in hand,

To hinder their butt from crawling out, Who, making one fierce attempt, but vain, Receives such a blow

From Red-Beard's crow

As crashes the skull and gashes the brain,
And blind, and dizzy, and stunned with pain,
With merely an interjectional O!
Back he rolls in the flames again.

"Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho!" That second fall

Seems the very best joke of all,

To judge by the roar,

Twice as loud as before,

That fills the hut from the roof to the floor,

And flies a league or two out of the door