Page:Tales by Musæus, Tieck, Richter, Volume 1.djvu/209

 The world seems new and fairer, All blooming like the rose; Can Eckart be a sharer In raptures such as those?

“Ha! Are those tones restoring My wife and bonny sons? All that I was deploring, My lost beloved ones?”

Yet soon his sense collected Brought doubt within his breast; These hellish arts detected, A horror him possess’d.

And now he sees the raging Of his young princes dear; Themselves to Hell engaging, His voice no more they hear.

And forth, in wild commotion, They rush, not knowing where; In tumult like the ocean, When mad his billows are.

Then, as these things assail’d him, He wist not what to do; His knighthood almost fail’d him Amid that hellish crew.

Then to his soul appeareth The hour the Duke did die; His friend’s faint prayer he heareth, He sees his fading eye.

And so his mind’s in armour, And hope is conquering fear; When see, the fiendish Charmer Himself comes piping near!

His sword to draw he essayeth, And smite the caitiff dead; But as the music playeth, His strength is from him fled.

And from the mountains issue Crowds of distorted forms, Of Dwarfs a boundless tissue Come simmering round in swarms,