Alas! the merry guests no more
Crowd through the hospitable door;
No eyes with youth and passion shine,
No cheeks glow redder than the wine;
No song, no laugh, no jovial din
Of drinking wassail to the pin;

But all is silent, sad, and drear,
And now the only sounds I hear
Are the hoarse rooks upon the walls,
And horses stamping in their stalls!
A horn sounds.

What ho! that merry, sudden blast
Reminds me of the days long past!
And, as of old resounding, grate

The heavy hinges of the gate,

And, clattering loud, with iron clank,

Down goes the sounding bridge of plank,

As if it were in haste to greet

The pressure of a traveller's feet!

Enter WALTER the Minnesinger.

WALTER.

How now, my friend! This looks quite lonely!

No banner flying from the walls,

No pages and no seneschals,

No wardens, and one porter only!
Is it you, Hubert?

HUBERT.

Ah! Master Walter!

WALTER.

Alas! how forms and faces alter!

I did not know you. You look older!
Your hair has grown much grayer and thinner,
And you stoop a little in the shoulder!

HUBERT.

Alack! I am a poor old sinner,

And, like these towers, begin to moulder;
And you have been absent many a year!

How is the Prince?

WALTER.

HUBERT.

He is not here;

He has been ill: and now has fled.

WALTER.

Speak it out frankly: say he's dead!

Is it not so?

HUBERT.

No; if you please;

A strange, mysterious disease

Fell on him with a sudden blight.

Whole hours together he would stand
Upon the terrace, in a dream,

Resting his head upon his hand,

Best pleased when he was most alone,
Like Saint John Nepomuck in stone,
Looking down into a stream.

In the Round Tower, night after night,
He sat, and bleared his eyes with books;
Until one morning we found him there
Stretched on the floor, as if in a swoon

He had fallen from his chair.

We hardly recognized his sweet looks!

Poor Prince!

WALTER.

HUBERT.

I think he might have mended;

And he did mend; but very soon
The Priests came flocking in, like rooks,
With all their crosiers and their crooks,

And so at last the matter ended.

WALTER.

How did it end?

HUBERT.

Why, in Saint Rochus

They made him stand, and wait his doom;
And, as if he were condemned to the tomb,
Began to mutter their hocus-pocus.

First, the Mass for the Dead they chaunted,
Then three times laid upon his head
A shovelful of church-yard clay,

Saying to him, as he stood undaunted,
"This is a sign that thou art dead,
So in thy heart be penitent!"

And forth from the chapel door he went
Into disgrace and banishment,

Clothed in a cloak of hodden gray,

And bearing a wallet, and a bell,
Whose sound should be a perpetual knell

To keep all travellers away.

WALTER.

O, horrible fate! Outcast, rejected,
As one with pestilence infected!

HUBERT.

Then was the family tomb unsealed,
And broken helmet, sword and shield,
Buried together, in common wreck,
As is the custom, when the last
Of any princely house has passed,
And thrice, as with a trumpet-blast,
A herald shouted down the stair