And now is foremost amid the stir
With a token only reveal’d to her;
A token that makes her shudder and shriek,
And point with her finger, and strive to speak—­
But before she can utter the name of the Devil,
Her head is under the water level!

MORAL.

There are folks about town—­to name no names—­
Who much resemble that deafest of Dames! 
  And over their tea, and muffins, and crumpets,
Circulate many a scandalous word,
And whisper tales they could only have heard
  Through some such Diabolical Trumpets!

THE FORGE.[44]

A ROMANCE OF THE IRON AGE.

“Who’s here, beside foul weather?”—­KING LEAR.

“Mine enemy’s dog, though he had bit me,
Should have stood that night against my fire”
—­CORDELIA

[Footnote 44:  This Poem was doubtless one of the results of Hood’s residence in Germany.  It is suggested apparently in about equal proportions by the Walpurgis-night in Faust, and Schiller’s Gang nach dem Eisenhammer.  Possibly Hood had been stirred up to the attempt by Retzsch’s outlines.  He has mixed up localities with the utmost freedom, the Harz, the Black Forest, and the Scene of Schiller’s Poem.  The influence of the Ingoldsby Legends is obvious throughout.]

PART I

Like a dead man gone to his shroud,
The sun has sunk in a copper cloud,
And the wind is rising squally and loud
  With many a stormy token,—­
Playing a wild funereal air
Through the branches bleak, bereaved, and bare,
To the dead leaves dancing here and there—­
  In short, if the truth were spoken,
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,
  Is always a dreary frolic—­
Then what must it be when nature groans,
And the very mountain murmurs and moans
As if it writhed with the cholic—­
With other strange supernatural tones,
From wood, and water, and echoing stones,
Not to forget unburied bones—­
  In a region so diabolic!

A place where he whom we call Old Scratch,
By help of his Witches—­a precious batch—­
Gives midnight concerts and sermons,
In a Pulpit and Orchestra built to match,
A plot right worthy of him to hatch,
And well adapted, he knows, to catch
  The musical, mystical Germans!

      However it’s quite
      As wild a night
As ever was known on that sinister height
  Since the Demon-Dance was morriced—­
The earth is dark, and the sky is scowling,
And the blast through the pines is howling and growling,
As if a thousand wolves were prowling
  About in the old BLACK FOREST!