THE FORGE. A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE. "Who's here, beside foul weather?" KING LEAR. "Mine enemy's dog, though he had bit me, PART I. LIKE a dead man gone to his shroud, Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare, It's an ugly night for anywhere, But an awful one for the Brocken! For oh! to stop On that mountain top, After the dews of evening drop, Then what must it be when nature groans, With other strange supernatural tones, In a region so diabolic! A place where he whom we call old Scratch, In a Pulpit and Orchestra built to match, However it's quite As ever was known on that sinister height As if a thousand wolves were prowling Madly, sadly, the Tempest raves Through the narrow gullies and hollow caves, On a gusty shore Mourning over the mariners' graves- Of demons met To wake a dead relation. Badly, madly, the vapours fly At a pace that no pen can paint! As pale as if she would faint! The lightning flashes, The trees encounter with horrible clashes, As from Stygian ditch, Rises a foul sulphureous fog, Yet ONE there is abroad in the storm, She spies the Traveller's lonely form, As none can do but the super-strong; And flapping his arms to keep him warm, For the breeze from the North is a regular starver, And to tell the truth, More keen, in sooth, And cutting than any German carver! However, no time it is to lag; And on he scrambles from crag to crag, Of jutting rock, With hardly room for a toe to wag; And sinking down a precipice now, Though fiercer than ever the hurricane blows, And round him eddy, with whirl and whizz, Or blanch any other visage than his, If his foot should miss, Instead of tending at all to pale, Like cheeks that feel the chill of affright- His heart is granite-his iron nerve And as to his foot, it does not swerve, Tho' the Screech-Owls are flitting about him that serve For parrots to Brocken Witches! Nay, full in his very path he spies It is not for that—no, it is not for that— Nor rat, Nor cat, As black as your hat, Nor the snake that hiss'd, nor the toad that spat, Nor glimmering candles of dead men's fat, Nor even the flap of the Vampire Bat, No anserine skin would rise thereat, It's the cold that makes Him shiver! So down, still down, through gully and glen, Past the Eagle's nest, and the She-Wolf's den, Or how narrow the track he has to keep, An abyss to leap, Or what may fly, or walk, or creep, Young Fridolin! young Fridolin ! Since first that singular fashion came in— Not worth so many buttons! Young Fridolin! young Fridolin ! But here we need no farther go, For whoever desires the Tale to know May read it all in Schiller. Faster now the Traveller speeds, In the murky air, He knows that the Eisen Hutte is there! Whose thoughts are set upon dainty fare- The Furnace Fire is the bait for Him! Faster and faster still he goes, Whilst redder and redder the welkin glows, |