Son and daughter; and their faces

Colorless grow utterly.

Whichever way

Looks the fear-struck father gray,

He beholds his children die.

" ’Woe! the blessed children both,

Takest thou in the joy of youth;

Take me, too, the joyless father!’

Spake the Grim Guest,

From his hollow, cavernous breast;

‘Roses in the spring I gather!’”

“That is indeed a striking ballad!” said Miss Ashburton, “but rather too grim and ghostly for this dull afternoon.”

“It begins joyously enough with the feast of Pentecost, and the crimson banners at the old castle.  Then the contrast is well managed.  The Knight in black mail, and the waving in of the mighty shadow in the dance, and the dropping of the faded flowers, are all strikingly presented to the imagination.  However, it tellsits own story, and needs no explanation.  Here is something in a different vein, though still melancholy.  The Castle by the Sea.  Shall I read it?”

“Yes, if you like.”

Flemming read;

“Hast thou seen that lordly castle,

That Castle by the Sea?

Golden and red above it

The clouds float gorgeously.

“And fain it would stoop downward

To the mirrored wave below;

And fain it would soar upward

In the evening’s crimson glow.

" ’Well have I seen that castle,

That Castle by the Sea,

And the moon above it standing,

And the mist rise solemnly.’

“The winds and the waves of ocean,

Had they a merry chime?

Didst thou hear, from those lofty chambers,

The harp and the minstrel’s rhyme?

" ’The winds and the waves of ocean,

They rested quietly,

But I heard on the gale a sound of wail,

And tears came to my eye.’

“And sawest thou on the turrets

The King and his royal bride?

And the wave of their crimson mantles?

And the golden crown of pride?

“Led they not forth in rapture

A beauteous maiden there?

Resplendent as the morning sun,

Beaming with golden hair?

" ’Well saw I the ancient parents,

Without the crown of pride;

They were moving slow, in weeds of woe,

No maiden was by their side!’

How do you like that?”

“It is very graceful, and pretty.  But Uhland seems to leave a great deal to his reader’s imagination.  All his readers should be poets themselves, or they will hardly comprehend him.  I confess, Ihardly understand the passage where he speaks of the castle’s stooping downward to the mirrored wave below, and then soaring upward into the gleaming sky.  I suppose, however, he wishes to express the momentary illusion we experience at beholding a perfect reflection of an old tower in the sea, and look at it as if it were not a mere shadow in the water; and yet the real tower rises far above, and seems to float in the crimson evening clouds.  Is that the meaning?”