Hid was the bright heaven's loveliness

Beneath a sudden cloud;

As a bride might doff her bridal dress,

To don her funeral shroud:

And over flood, and over fell,

With a wild and wicked shout,

From the secret cell, where in chains they dwell,
The joyous winds rushed out;

And the dark hills through, the thunder flew,
And down the fierce hail came;

And from peak to peak the lightning threw
Its shafts of liquid flame.

The boat went down ;-without delay
The luckless boat-man swooned away;
And when, as a clear spring morning rose,
He woke in wonder from repose,

The river was calm as the river could be,

And the thrush was awake on the gladsome tree; And there he lay, in a sunny cave,

On the margin of the tranquil wave,

Half deaf with that infernal din,

And wet, poor fellow, to the skin.

He looked to the left, and he looked to the right:

Why hastened he not, the noble knight,

To dry his aged nurse's tears,

To calm the hoary butler's fears;

To listen to the prudent speeches

Of half a dozen loquacious leeches;
To swallow cordials circumspectly,

And change his dripping cloak directly?
With foot outstretched, with hand upraised,
In vast surprise he gazed and gazed;
Within a dim and damp recess,

A maiden lay in her loveliness;
Lived she? in sooth 't were hard to tell;
Sleep counterfeited Death so well:

A shelf of the rock was all her bed;
A ceiling of crystal was o'er her head;
Silken robe, nor satin vest,

Shrouded her form in its silent rest;
Only her long, long, golden hair

About her lay like a thin robe there:
Up to her couch the young knight crept ;-

How very sound the maiden slept !

Fearful and faint the young knight sighed ;—

The echoes of the cave replied.

He leaned to look upon her face;

He clasped her hand in a wild embrace;

Never was form of such fine mould;

But the hands and the face were as white and cold,

As they of the Parian stone were made,

To which, in great Minerva's shade,

The Athenian sculptor's toilsome knife
Gave all of loveliness but life.

On her fair neck there seemed no stain,

Where the pure blood coursed through the delicate

vein;

And her breath-if breath indeed it were,—

Flowed in a current so soft and rare,

It would scarcely have stirred the young moth's wing, On the path of his noonday wandering :

Never on earth a creature trod,

Half so lovely, or half so odd.

Count Otto stares till his eyelids ache,
And wonders when she 'll please to wake;
While fancy whispers strange suggestions,
And wonder prompts a score of questions.

Is she a nymph of another sphere?

Whence came she hither?-what doth she here?

Or if the morning of her birth

Be registered on this our earth,

Why hath she fled from her father's halls?

And where hath she left her cloaks and shawls?

There was no time for reason's lectures,
There was no time for wit's conjectures;
He threw his arm, with timid haste,
Around the maiden's slender waist,
And raised her up in a modest way,
From the cold bare rock on which she lay.
He was but a mile from his castle gate,

And the lady was scarcely five stone weight;

He stopped, in less than half an hour,

With his beauteous burthen, at Belmont Tower.

Gay, I ween, was the chamber drest,

As the Count gave order, for his guest;

But scarcely on the couch, 't is said,
That gentle guest was fairly laid,

When she opened at once her great blue eyes,
And after a glance of brief surprise,

Ere she had spoken, and ere she had heard,
Of wisdom or wit a single word,

She laughed so long, and laughed so loud,
That dame Ulrica often vowed,

A dirge is a merrier thing by half
Than such a senseless, soulless laugh.
Around the tower the elfin crew

Seemed shouting in mirthful concert too;
And echoed roof, and trembled rafter,
With that unsentimental laughter.

As soon as that droll tumult passed,
The maiden's tongue, unchained at last,
Asserted all its female right,

And talked and talked with all its might.
Oh! how her low and liquid voice
Made the rapt hearer's soul rejoice!

'T was full of those clear tones that start
From innocent childhood's happy heart,

Ere passion and sin disturb the well,
In which their mirth and music dwell.
But man nor master could make out
What the eloquent maiden talked about ;
The things she uttered, like did seem

To the babbling waves of a limpid stream;

For the words of her speech, if words they might be,
Were the words of a speech of a far countrie;

And when she had said them o'er and o'er,
Count Otto understood no more,

Than you or I of the slang that falls
From dukes and dupes at Tattersall's,
Of Hebrew from a bearded Jew,

Or metaphysics from a Blue.

Count Otto swore,-Count Otto's reading
Might well have taught him better breeding,—
That whether the maiden should fume or fret,
The maiden should not leave him yet.
And so he took prodigious pains

To make her happy in her chains.
From Paris came a pair of cooks,
From Gottingen a load of books;
From Venice store of gorgeous suits,
From Florence minstrels and their lutes;
The youth himself had special pride
In breaking horses for his bride;