THE BELLS. 
     Defunctos ploro! 
     Pestem fugo! 
     Festa decoro!

LUCIFER. 
Shake the casements! 
Break the painted
Panes, that flame with gold and crimson;
Scatter them like leaves of Autumn,
Swept away before the blast!

VOICES. 
Oh, we cannot! 
The Archangel
Michael flames from every window,
With the sword of fire that drove us
Headlong, out of heaven, aghast!

THE BELLS. 
     Funera plango! 
     Fulgura frango! 
     Sabbata pango!

LUCIFER. 
Aim your lightnings
At the oaken,
Massive, iron-studded portals! 
Sack the house of God, and scatter
Wide the ashes of the dead!

VOICES. 
Oh, we cannot! 
The Apostles
And the Martyrs, wrapped in mantles,
Stand as warders at the entrance,
Stand as sentinels o’erhead!

THE BELLS. 
     Excito lentos! 
     Dissipo ventos! 
     Paco cruentos!

LUCIFER. 
Baffled! baffled! 
Inefficient,
Craven spirits! leave this labor
Unto time, the great Destroyer! 
Come away, ere night is gone!

VOICES. 
Onward! onward! 
With the night-wind,
Over field and farm and forest,
Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,
Blighting all we breathe upon!

They sweep away.  Organ and Gregorian Chant.

CHOIR. 
Nocte surgentes
Vigilemus omnes!

I

THE CASTLE OF VAUTSBERG ON THE RHINE

A chamber in a tower.  PRINCE HENRY sitting alone, ill and restless.  Midnight.

PRINCE HENRY. 
I cannot sleep! my fervid brain
Calls up the vanished Past again,
And throws its misty splendors deep
Into the pallid realms of sleep! 
A breath from that far-distant shore
Comes freshening ever more and more,
And wafts o’er intervening seas
Sweet odors from the Hesperides! 
A wind, that through the corridor
Just stirs the curtain, and no more,
And, touching the aolian strings,
Faints with the burden that it brings! 
Come back! ye friendships long departed! 
That like o’erflowing streamlets started,
And now are dwindled, one by one,
To stony channels in the sun! 
Come back! ye friends, whose lives are ended,
Come back, with all that light attended,
Which seemed to darken and decay
When ye arose and went away!

They come, the shapes of joy and woe,
The airy crowds of long ago,
The dreams and fancies known of yore,
That have been, and shall be no more. 
They change the cloisters of the night
Into a garden of delight;
They make the dark and dreary hours
Open and blossom into flowers! 
I would not sleep!  I love to be
Again in their fair company;
But ere my lips can bid them stay,
They pass and vanish quite away! 
Alas! our memories may retrace
Each circumstance of time and place,
Season and scene come back again,
And outward things unchanged remain;
The rest we cannot reinstate;
Ourselves we can not re-create;
Nor set our souls to the same key
Of the remembered harmony!