Though long thou livest, yet this grace Until the moment of thy death Unchangeable continueth!"Then said he to the Priest: "I find This document is duly signed Brother John Tetzel, his own hand.
At all tribunals in the land In evidence it may be used;Therefore acquitted is the accused."
Then to the cobbler turned: "My friend, Pray tell me, didst thou ever read Reynard the Fox?"--"O yes, indeed!"--"I thought so.Don't forget the end."
INTERLUDE
"What was the end? I am ashamed Not to remember Reynard's fate;I have not read the book of late;
Was he not hanged?" the Poet said.
The Student gravely shook his head, And answered: "You exaggerate.
There was a tournament proclaimed, And Reynard fought with Isegrim The Wolf, and having vanquished him, Rose to high honor in the State, And Keeper of the Seals was named!"At this the gay Sicilian laughed:
"Fight fire with fire, and craft with craft;Successful cunning seems to be The moral of your tale," said he.
"Mine had a better, and the Jew's Had none at all, that I could see;His aim was only to amuse."
Meanwhile from out its ebon case His violin the Minstrel drew, And having tuned its strings anew, Now held it close in his embrace, And poising in his outstretched hand The bow, like a magician's wand, He paused, and said, with beaming face:
"Last night my story was too long;
To-day I give you but a song, An old tradition of the North;But first, to put you in the mood, I will a little while prelude, And from this instrument draw forth Something by way of overture."He played; at first the tones were pure And tender as a summer night, The full moon climbing to her height, The sob and ripple of the seas, The flapping of an idle sail;And then by sudden and sharp degrees The multiplied, wild harmonies Freshened and burst into a gale;A tempest howling through the dark, A crash as of some shipwrecked bark.
A loud and melancholy wail.
Such was the prelude to the tale Told by the Minstrel; and at times He paused amid its varying rhymes, And at each pause again broke in The music of his violin, With tones of sweetness or of fear, Movements of trouble or of calm, Creating their own atmosphere;As sitting in a church we hear Between the verses of the psalm The organ playing soft and clear, Or thundering on the startled ear.
THE MUSICIAN'S TALE
THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN
I
At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea, Within the sandy bar, At sunset of a summer's day, Ready for sea, at anchor lay The good ship Valdemar.
The sunbeams danced upon the waves, And played along her side;And through the cabin windows streamed In ripples of golden light, that seemed The ripple of the tide.
There sat the captain with his friends, Old skippers brown and hale, Who smoked and grumbled o'er their grog, And talked of iceberg and of fog, Of calm and storm and gale.
And one was spinning a sailor's yarn About Klaboterman, The Kobold of the sea; a spright Invisible to mortal sight, Who o'er the rigging ran.
Sometimes he hammered in the hold, Sometimes upon the mast, Sometimes abeam, sometimes abaft, Or at the bows he sang and laughed, And made all tight and fast.
He helped the sailors at their work, And toiled with jovial din;He helped them hoist and reef the sails, He helped them stow the casks and bales, And heave the anchor in.
But woe unto the lazy louts, The idlers of the crew;Them to torment was his delight, And worry them by day and night, And pinch them black and blue.
And woe to him whose mortal eyes Klaboterman behold.
It is a certain sign of death!--
The cabin-boy here held his breath, He felt his blood run cold.
II
The jolly skipper paused awhile, And then again began;"There is a Spectre Ship," quoth he, "A ship of the Dead that sails the sea, And is called the Carmilhan.
"A ghostly ship, with a ghostly crew, In tempests she appears;And before the gale, or against the gale, She sails without a rag of sail, Without a helmsman steers.
"She haunts the Atlantic north and south, But mostly the mid-sea, Where three great rocks rise bleak and bare Like furnace-chimneys in the air, And are called the Chimneys Three.
"And ill betide the luckless ship That meets the Carmilhan;Over her decks the seas will leap, She must go down into the deep, And perish mouse and man."The captain of the Valdemar Laughed loud with merry heart.
"I should like to see this ship," said he;"I should like to find these Chimneys Three, That are marked down in the chart.
"I have sailed right over the spot," he said "With a good stiff breeze behind, When the sea was blue, and the sky was clear,--You can follow my course by these pinholes here,--And never a rock could find."
And then he swore a dreadful oath, He swore by the Kingdoms Three, That, should he meet the Carmilhan, He would run her down, although he ran Right into Eternity!
All this, while passing to and fro, The cabin-boy had heard;He lingered at the door to hear, And drank in all with greedy ear, And pondered every word.
He was a simple country lad, But of a roving mind.
"O, it must be like heaven," thought he, "Those far-off foreign lands to see, And fortune seek and find!"But in the fo'castle, when he heard The mariners blaspheme, He thought of home, he thought of God, And his mother under the churchyard sod, And wished it were a dream.
One friend on board that ship had he;
'T was the Klaboterman, Who saw the Bible in his chest, And made a sign upon his breast, All evil things to ban.
III
The cabin windows have grown blank As eyeballs of the dead;No more the glancing sunbeams burn On the gilt letters of the stern, But on the figure-head;On Valdemar Victorious, Who looketh with disdain To see his image in the tide Dismembered float from side to side, And reunite again.
"It is the wind," those skippers said, "That swings the vessel so;It is the wind; it freshens fast, 'T is time to say farewell at last 'T is time for us to go."They shook the captain by the hand, "Goodluck! goodluck!" they cried;Each face was like the setting sun, As, broad and red, they one by one Went o'er the vessel's side.