Page:Complete Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier (1895).djvu/172

140  They left the dreadful under-land and passed the gate of glass; They felt the sunshine’s warm caress, they trod the soft, green grass.

And when, beneath, they saw the Dwarf stretch up to them his brown And crooked claw-like fingers, they tossed his red cap down.

Oh, never shone so bright a sun, was never sky so blue, As hand in hand they homeward walked the pleasant meadows through!

And never sang the birds so sweet in Rambin’s woods before, And never washed the waves so soft along the Baltic shore;

And when beneath his door-yard trees the father met his child, The bells rung out their merriest peal, the folks with joy ran wild.

And soon from Rambin’s holy church the twain came forth as one, The Amptman kissed a daughter, the miller blest a son.

John Deitrich’s fame went far and wide, and nurse and maid crooned o’er Their cradle song: “Sleep on, sleep well, the Trolls shall come no more!”

For in the haunted Nine Hills he set a cross of stone; And Elf and Brown Dwarf sought in vain a door where door was none.

The tower he built in Rambin, fair Rügen’s pride and boast, Looked o’er the Baltic water to the Pomeranian coast;

And, for his worth ennobled, and rich beyond compare, Count Deitrich and his lovely bride dwelt long and happy there.