sounds,

He takes his lantern, and goes the rounds,
Flashing it into our sleepy eyes,
Merely to say it is time to arise.

But enough of that. Go one, if you please,
With your story about St. Gildas de Rhuys.
Lucifer. Well, it finally came to pass
That, half in fun and half in malice,
One Sunday at Mass

We put some poison into the chalice.

But, either by accident or design,

Peter Abelard kept away

From the chapel that day,

And a poor, young friar, who in his stead
Drank the sacramental wine,

Fell on the steps of the altar, dead!

But look, do you see at the window there
That face, with a look of grief and despair,
That ghastly face, as of one in pain?
Monks. Who? where?

Lucifer. As I spoke, it vanished away again.
Friar Cuthbert. It is that nefarious

Siebald the Refectorarious.

That fellow is always playing the scout,

Creeping and peeping, and prowling about; And then he regales

The Abbot with scandalous tales.

Once caught the Devil by the nose!

Lucifer. Ha! ha! that story is very clever, But has no foundation whatsoever. Quick! for I see his face again Glaring in at the window-pane; Now! now! and do not spare your blows. (FRIAR PAUL opens the window suddenly, and seizes SIEBALD. They beat him.)

Friar Siebald. Help! help! are you going to slay me?

Friar Paul. That will teach you again to betray me!

Friar Siebald. Mercy! mercy!

Friar Paul (shouting and beating).
Rumpas bellorum lorum,
Vim confer amorum

Morum, verorum, rorum
Tue plena polorum!

Lucifer. Who stands in the doorway yonder,
Stretching out his trembling hand,
Just as Abelard used to stand,
The flash of his keen, black eyes,

Forerunning the thunder?

The Monks (in confusion). The Abbot! the Abbot!

Friar Cuthbert, And what is the wonder! He seems to have taken you by surprise. Friar Francis. Hide the great flagon From the eyes of the dragon!

Friar Cuthbert. Pull the brown hood over your face!

This will bring us into disgrace!

Abbot. What means this revel and carouse?

Is this a tavern and drinking-house?
Are you Christian monks, or heathen devils,
To pollute this convent with your revels?
Were Peter Damain still upon earth,
To be shocked by such ungodly mirth,
He would write your names, with pen of gall
In his Book of Gomorrah, one and all!
Away, you drunkards! to your cells,
And pray till you hear the matin-bells;
And you, Brother Francis, and you, Brother

Paul!

And as a penance mark each prayer
With the scourge upon your shoulders bare:
Nothing atones for such a sin

But the blood that follows the discipline.
And you, Brother Cuthbert, come with me
Alone into the sacristy;

You, who should be a guide to your brothers,
And are ten times worse than all the others,
For you I've a draught that has long been brew-

ing,

You shall do a penance worth the doing! Away to your prayers, then, one and all!

I wonder the very convent wall

Does not crumble and crush you in its fall!

The Neighbouring Nunnery. The ABBESS ÍRMINGARD sitting with ELSIE in the Moonlight.

Irmingard. The night is silent, the wind is still

The moon is looking from yonder hill
Down upon convent, and grove, and garden;

brothers

Telling scandalous tales of the others?

Out upon him, the lazy loon!

I would put a stop to that pretty soon,

In a way he should rue it.

Monks. How shall we do it?

Lucifer. Do you, Brother Paul,

Leaving behind them no sorrowful trace,
Only the tender and quiet grace

Of one, whose heart has been healed with par

don..

And such am I. My soul within

Was dark with passion and soiled with sin.

But now its wounds are healed again;
Gone are the anguish, the terror, and pain;
Far across that desolate land of woe,
O'er whose burning sands I was forced to go,
A wind from heaven began to blow;
And all my being trembled and shook,

As the leaves of the tree, or the grass of the field,
And I was healed, as the sick are healed,
When fanned by the leaves of the Holy Book!

As thou sittest in the moonlight there,
Its glory flooding thy golden hair,
And the only darkness that which lies
In the haunted chambers of thine eyes,

I feel my soul drawn unto thee,

Strangely, and strongly, and more and more,
As to one I have known and love before;
For every soul is akin to me

That dwells in the land of mystery!

I am the Lady Irmingard,

Born of a noble race and name!

Many a wandering Suabian bard,

Whose life was dreary, and bleak, and hard,
Has found through me the way to fame.

Brief and bright were those days, and the night
Which followed was full of a lurid light.
Love, that of every woman's heart

Will have the whole, and not a part,
That is to her, in Nature's plan,"
More than ambition is to man,

Her light, her life, her very breath,

With no alternative but death,

Found me a maiden soft and young,

Just from the convent's cloistered school,
And seated on my lowly stool,
Attentive while the minstrels sung.
Gallant, graceful, gentle, tall,
Fairest, noblest, best of all,
Was Walter of the Vogelweid;
And, whatsoever may betide,
Still I think of him with pride!
His song was of the summer-time,
The very birds sang in his rhyme;
The sunshine, the delicious air,

The fragrance of the flowers, were there;
And I grew restless as I heard,
Restless and buoyant as a bird,
Down soft, aërial currents sailing.

O'er blossomed orchards, and fields in bloom,
And through the momentry gloom

Of shadows o'er the landscape trailing,
Yielding and borne I know not where,
But feeling resistance unavailing.

And thus, unnoticed and apart,
And more by accident than choice,
I listened to that single voice
Until the chambers of my heart
Were filled with it by night and day.
One night,-it was a night in May,-
Within the garden, unawares,
Under the blossoms in the gloom,
I heard it utter my own name
With protestations and wild prayers;
And it rang through me, and became
Like the archangel's trump of doom,
Which the soul hears, and must obey;
And mine arose as from a tomb.
My former life now seemed to me
Such as hereafter death may be,
When in the great Eternity
We shall awake and find it day.
It was a dream, and would not stay;
A dream, that in a single night
Faded and vanished out of sight.
My Father's anger followed fast
This passion, as a freshening blast
Seeks out and fans the fire, whose rage
It may increase, but not assuage.

And he exclaimed: "No wandering bard
Shall win thy hand, O Irmingard!
For which Prince Henry of Hoheneck
By messenger and letter sues,'

Gently, but firmly, I replied:
"Henry of Hoheneck I discard!
Never the hand of Irmingard

Shall lie in his as the hand of a bride!"
This said I, Walter, for thy sake;
This said I, for I could not choose.
After a pause, my father spake
In that cold and deliberate tone,
Which turns the hearer into stone,
And seems itself the act to be
That follows with such dread certainty;
"This, or the cloister and the veil!"
No other words than these he said,
But they were like a funeral wail:
My life was ended, my heart was dead.
That night from the castle-gate went down,
With silent, slow, and stealthy pace,
Two shadows, mounted on shadowy steeds,
Taking the narrow path that leads
Into the forest dense and brown.

In the leafy darkness of the place,
One could not distinguish form nor face,
Only a bulk without a shape,

A darker shadow in the shade;

One scarce could say it moved or stayed.
Thus it was we made our escape!

A foaming brook, with many a bound,
Followed us like a playful hound;
Then leaped before us, and in the hollow
Paused, and waited for us to follow,
And seemed impatient, and afraid
That our tardy flight should be betrayed
By the sound our horses' hoof-beats made.
And when we reached the plain below,
We paused a moment and drew rein
To look back at the castle again

And we saw the windows all a-glow
With lights that were passing to and fro;
Our hearts with terror ceased to beat;
The brook crept silent to our feet,

We knew what we most feared to know.
Then suddenly horns began to blow;
And we heard a shout and a heavy tramp,
And our horses snorted in the damp
Night-air of the meadows green and wide,
And in a moment, side by side,

So close, they must have seemed but one,
The shadows across the moonlight run,
And another came, and swept behind,
Like the shadows of clouds before the wind!
How I remember that breathless flight
Across the moors, in the summer night!
How under our feet the long, white road,
Backward like a river flowed,
Sweeping with it fences and hedges,
Whilst farther away, and overhead,
Paler than I, with fear and dread,
The moon fled with us as we fled
Along the forest's jagged edges!
All this I can remember well;
But of what afterwards befell
I nothing further can recall
Than a blind, desperate, headlong fall;
The rest is a blank and darkness all.
When I awoke out of this swoon,
The sun was shining, not the moon,
Making a cross upon the wall

With the bars of my windows narrow and tall;
And I prayed to it, as I had been wont to pray,
From early childhood, day by day,

Each morning, as in bed I lay!

I was lying again in my own room!

And I thanked God, in my fever and pain,
That those shadows on the midnight plain
Were gone, and could not come again!
I struggled no longer with my doom!
This happened many years ago,

I left my father's home to come,
Like Catherine to her martyrdom,
For blindly I esteemed it so.
And when I heard the convent door,
Behind me close, to ope no more,

I felt it smite me like a blow.
Through all my limbs a shudder ran,
And on my bruised spirit fell
The dampness of my narrow cell
As night-air on a wounded man,
Giving intolerable pain.

But now a better life began.

I felt the agony decrease

By slow degrees, then wholly cease,
Ending in perfect rest and peace!

It was not apathy, nor dulness,

That weighed and pressed upon my brain,
But the same passion I had given

To earth before, now turned to heaven
With all its overflowing fulness.

Alas! the world is full of peril!

The path that runs through the fairest nreads, On the sunniest side of the valley, leads

Into a region bleak and sterile!

Alike in the high-born and the lowly,
The will is feeble and passion strong.
We cannot sever right from wrong;
Some falsehood mingles with all truth;
Nor is it strange the heart of youth
Should waver and comprehend but slowly
The things that are holy and unholy!
But in this sacred and calm retreat,
We are well and safely shielded

From winds that blow, and waves that beat,
From the cold, and rain, and blighting heat,
To which the strongest hearts have yielded.
Here we stand as the Virgins Seven,
For our celestial bridegroom yearning;
Our hearts are lamps for ever burning,
With a steady and unwavering flame,
Pointing upward, for ever the same,
Steadily upward toward the Heaven!
The moon is hidden behind a cloud;
A sudden darkness fills the room,
And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom,
Shine like jewels in a shroud.

On the leaves is a sound of falling rain;
A bird, awakened in its nest,
Gives a faint twitter of unrest,

Then smooths its plumes and sleeps again.
No other sounds than these I hear;
The hour of midnight must be near.
Thou art o'er spent with the day's fatigue
Of riding many a dusty league;
Sink, then, gently to thy slumber;
Me so many cares encumber,

So many ghosts, and forms of fright,
Have started from their graves to-night,
They have driven sleep from mind eyes away;
I will go down to the chapel and pray.

Whither he leads. And not the old alone,
But the young also hear it, and are still.

Prince Henry. Yes, in their sadder moments, 'Tis the sound

Of their own hearts they hear, half full of tears, Which are like crystal cups, half filled with

water,

Responding to the pressure of a finger
With music sweet and low and melancholy.
Let us go forward, and no longer stay
In this great picture-gallery of Death!
I hate it! ay, the very thought of it!
Elsie. Why is it hateful to you?
Prince Henry.
For the reason
That life, and all that speaks of life, is lovely,
And death, and all that speaks of death, is hate-

ful.

Elsie. The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!

Prince Henry (emerging from the bridge). I breathe again more freely. Ah, how pleasant.

To come once more into the light of day,
Out of that shadow of death! To hear again
The hoof-beats of our horses on firm ground,
And not upon those hollow planks, resounding
With a sepulchral echo, like the clods

The Devil's Bridge. PRINCE HENRY and ELSIE crossing, with attendants.

Guide. This bridge is called the Devil's Bridge, With a single arch, from ridge to ridge,

It leaps across the terrible chasm
Yawning beneath us, black and deep,
As if, in some convulsive spasm,
The summits of the hills had cracked,
And made a road for the cataract,
That raves and rages down the steep!
Lucifer (under the bridge) Ha! ha!
Guide. Never any bridge but this
Could stand across the wild abyss;
All the rest, of wood or stone,
By the Devil's hand were overthrown.
He toppled crags from the precipice,
And whatsoe'er was built by day
In the night was swept away;
None could stand but this alone.

Lucifer (under the bridge). Ha! ha!

Guide. I showed you in the valley a boulder
Marked with the imprint of his shoulder;
As he was bearing it up this way,
A peasant, passing, cried, "Herr Jé!"
And the Devil dropped it in his fright,
And vanished suddenly out of sight.

Lucifer (under the bridge). Ha! ha!
Guide. Abbot Giraldus of Einsiedel,
For pilgrims on their way to Rome,
Built this at last, with a single arch,
Under which, on its endless march,
Runs the river, white with foam,

Like a thread through the eye of a needle,
And the Devil promised to let it stand,
Under compact and condition

That the first living thing which crossed
Should be surrendered into his hand,

And be beyond redemption lost,

Lucifer (under the bridge). Ha! ha! perdition! Guide. At length the bridge being all completed,

The Abbot, standing at its head,
Threw across it a loaf of bread,
Which a hungry dog sprang after,

And the rocks re-echoed with peals of laugh

ter,

Prince Henry. Italy!
Elsie.
Land of the Madonna!
How beautiful it is! It seems a garden
Of Paradise!

Prince Henry. Nay, of Gethsemane
To thee and me, of passion and of prayer!
Yet once of Paradise. Long years ago
I wandered as a youth among its bowers,
And never from my heart has faded quite
Its memory, that, like a summer sunset,
Encircles with a ring of purple light
All the horizon of my youth.

Guide.

O friends!

Prince Henry. Here let us pause a moment in the trembling

Shadow and sunshine of the road-side trees,
And, our tired horses in a group assembling,
Inhale long draughts of this delicious breeze.
Our fleeter steeds have distanced our attendants;
They lag behind us with a slower pace;
We will await them under the green pendants
Of the great willows in this shady place.
Ho, Barbarossa! How thy mottled haunches
Sweat with this canter over hill and glade!
Stand still, and let these overhanging branches
Fan thy hot sides and comfort thee with shade!
Elsie. What a delightful landscape spreads be-

fore us,

Marked with a whitewashed cottage here and there!

And, in luxuriant garlands drooping o'er us,
Blossoms of grape-vines scent the sunny air.
Prince Henry. Hark! what sweet sounds are
those, whose accents holy
Fill the warm noon with music sad and sweet?
Elsie. It is a band of pilgrims, moving slowly
On their long journey with uncovered feet.
Pilgrims (chanting the Hymn of St. Hildebert).

Me receptet Sion illa,

Sion David, urbs tranquilla,
Cujus faber auctor lucis.
Cujus portæ lignum crucis,
Cujus claves lingua Petri,

Cujus cives semper læti,

Cujus muri lapis vivus,
Cujus custos Rex festivus!

Lucifer (as a Friar in the procession).

Here am I, too, in the pious band,
In the garb of a barefooted Carmelite dressed!
The souls of my feet are as hard and tanned
As the conscience of old Pope Hildebrand,
The Holy Satan, who made the wives
Of the bishops lead such shameful lives.
All day long I beat my breast,
And chant with a most particular zest