Now in the spacious chamber the minstrels twain are seen;
High on the throne in splendor are seated king and queen:
The king with terrors gleaming, a ruddy Northern Light;
The queen all grace and sweetness, a full moon soft and bright.
The graybeard swept the harp-strings,-they sounded wondrous clear;
The notes with growing fullness thrilled through the listening ear:
Pure as the tones of angels the young man's accents flow;
The old man's gently murmur, like spirit-voices low.
They sing of love and springtime, of happy golden days,
Of manly worth and freedom, of truth and holy ways;
They sing of all things lovely, that human hearts delight,
They sing of all things lofty, that human souls excite.
The courtier train around them forget their jeerings now;
The king's defiant soldiers in adoration bow;
The queen to tears now melted, with rapture now possessed,
Throws down to them in guerdon a rosebud from her breast.
"Have ye misled my people, and now my wife suborn? »
Shouts out the ruthless monarch, and shakes with wrath and
He whirls his sword-like lightning the young man's breast it
That 'stead of golden legends, bright life-blood filled his throat.
Dispersed, as by a tempest, was all the listening swarm;
The youth sighs out his spirit upon his master's arm,
Who round him wraps his mantle, and sets him on the steed,
There tightly binds him upright, and from the court doth speed.
Before the olden gateway, there halts the minstrel old;
His golden harp he seizes, above all harps extolled:
Against a marble pillar he snaps its tuneful strings;
Through castle and through garden his voice of menace rings:
" Woe, woe to thee, proud castle! ne'er let sweet tones resound
Henceforward through thy chambers, nor harp's nor voice's sound:
Let sighs and tramp of captives and groans dwell here for aye,
Till retribution sink thee in ruin and decay.
"Woe, woe to you, fair gardens, in summer light that glow:
To you this pallid visage, deformed by death, I show,
That every leaf may wither, and every fount run dry,—
That ye in future ages a desert heap may lie.
"Woe, woe to thee, curst tyrant! that art the minstrel's bane:
Be all thy savage strivings for glory's wreath in vain!
Be soon thy name forgotten, sunk deep in endless night,
Or, like a last death murmur, exhaled in vapor light!"
The graybeard's curse was uttered; heaven heard his bitter cry:
The walls are strewn in fragments, the halls in ruins lie;
Still stands one lofty column to witness olden might
E'en this, already shivered, may crumble down to-night.
Where once were pleasant gardens, is now a wasted land;'
No tree there lends its shadow, nor fount bedews the sand:
The monarch's name recordeth no song, nor lofty verse;
'Tis wholly sunk - forgotten! Such is the Minstrel's Curse!
Translation of W. W. Skeat.
The mountain is my own domain:
It calls its storms from sea and plain;
From north to south they howl afar;
My voice is heard amid their war.
The mountain boy am I!
The lightnings far beneath me lie;
High stand I here in clear blue sky;
I know them, and to them I call,
"In quiet leave my father's hall."
The mountain boy am I!
And when the tocsin sounds alarms,
And mountain bale-fires call to arms,
Then I descend,-I join my king,
My sword I wave, my lay I sing.
The mountain boy am I!
Anonymous Translation in Longfellow's 'Poets and Poetry of Europe.
"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 ?"—
But the younger, brighter form
Passed in battle and in storm.
So, whene'er I turn my eye
Back upon the days gone by,
Saddening thoughts of friends come o'er me,—
Friends that closed their course before me.
For, invisible to thee,
Spirits twain have crossed with me.
Translation of Sarah Taylor Austin.
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