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(From Marmion)
DIDST e’er, dear Heber, pass along | |
| Beneath the towers of Franchemont, | |
| Which, like an eagle’s nest in air, | |
| Hangs o’er the stream and hamlet fair? | |
| Deep in their vaults, the peasants say, | 5 |
| A mighty treasure buried lay, | |
| Amassed, through rapine and through wrong, | |
| By the last lord of Franchemont. | |
| The iron chest is bolted hard, | |
| A huntsman sits, its constant guard; | 10 |
| Around his neck his horn is hung, | |
| His hanger in his belt is slung; | |
| Before his feet his bloodhounds lie: | |
| An ’t were not for his gloomy eye, | |
| Whose withering glance no heart can brook, | 15 |
| As true a huntsman doth he look, | |
| As bugle e’er in brake did sound, | |
| Or ever hollooed to a hound. | |
| To chase the fiend, and win the prize, | |
| In that same dungeon ever tries | 20 |
| An aged Necromantic priest; | |
| It is an hundred years, at least, | |
| Since ’twixt them first the strife begun, | |
| And neither yet has lost or won. | |
| And oft the conjurer’s words will make | 25 |
| The stubborn demon groan and quake; | |
| And oft the bands of iron break, | |
| Or bursts one lock, that still amain, | |
| Fast as ’t is opened, shuts again. | |
| That magic strife within the tomb | 30 |
| May last until the day of doom, | |
| Unless the adept shall learn to tell | |
| The very word that clenched the spell, | |
| When Franch’mont locked the treasure-cell. | |
| An hundred years are past and gone, | 35 |
| And scarce three letters has he won. | |
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