A LEGEND OF BREGENZ1

Girt round with rugged mountains
The fair Lake Constance lies;
In her blue heart reflected

Shine back the starry skies;
And, watching each white cloudlet
Float silently and slow,

You think a piece of heaven
Lies on our earth below!

Midnight is there: and Silence,
Enthroned in heaven, looks down

Upon her own calm mirror,

Upon a sleeping town:
For Bregenz, that quaint city
Upon the Tyrol 2 shore,

Has stood above Lake Constance
A thousand years and more.

Her battlements and towers,

From off their rocky steep,

1 Bregenz, a town in Tyrol, is situated at the eastern end of Lake Constance.

2 Tyrol is the most southerly province of the Austrian empire and is bounded on the south, southeast, and southwest by Italy. It is a mountainous country, and, in regard to scenery, it is second only to Switzerland, of which it may be regarded as a continuation.

Have cast their trembling shadow

For ages on the deep: Mountain, and lake, and valley,

A sacred legend know,

Of how the town was saved, one night, Three hundred years ago.

Far from her home and kindred,
A Tyrol maid had fled,
To serve in the Swiss valleys,
And toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted
So silently and fast,

Seemed to bear farther from her
The memory of the Past.

She served kind, gentle masters,
Nor asked for rest or change;

Her friends seemed no more new ones,
Their speech seemed no more strange;
And when she led her cattle

To pasture every day,

She ceased to look and wonder
On which side Bregenz lay.

She spoke no more of Bregenz,
With longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded

In a deep mist of years; She heeded not the rumors

Of Austrian war and strife; Each day she rose, contented, To the calm toils of life.

Yet, when her master's children
Would clustering round her stand,
She sang them ancient ballads
Of her own native land;
And when at morn and evening
She knelt before God's throne,
The accents of her childhood
Rose to her lips alone.

And so she dwelt: the valley
More peaceful year by year;
When suddenly strange portents
Of some great deed seemed near.
The golden corn was bending
Upon its fragile stock,

While farmers, heedless of their fields, and down in talk.

Paced up

The men seemed stern and altered,

With looks cast on the ground; With anxious faces, one by one,

The women gathered round;

All talk of flax, or spinning,

Or work, was put away;

The very children seemed afraid

To go alone to play.

One day, out in the meadow

With strangers from the town, Some secret plan discussing,

The men walked up and down. Yet now and then seemed watching A strange uncertain gleam,

That looked like lances 'mid the trees, That stood below the stream.

At eve they all assembled,

Then care and doubt were fled; With jovial laugh they feasted; The board was nobly spread.

The elder of the village

Rose up,

his glass in hand,

And cried, "We drink the downfall.

Of an accursed land!

"The night is growing darker,
Ere one more day is flown,
Bregenz, our foeman's stronghold,
Bregenz shall be our own!"

H

The women shrank in terror

(Yet Pride, too, had her part), But one poor Tyrol maiden

Felt death within her heart.

Before her stood fair Bregenz ;
Once more her towers arose;
What were the friends beside her?
Only her country's foes!

The faces of her kinsfolk,

The days of childhood flown, The echoes of her mountains, Reclaimed her as their own!

Nothing she heard around her
(Though shouts rang forth again),
Gone were the green Swiss valleys,
The pasture, and the plain;
Before her eyes one vision,

And in her heart one cry,

That said, "Go forth, save Bregenz,
And then, if need be, die!"

With trembling haste and breathless,
With noiseless step, she sped ;

Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed;