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Translated by J. McCarthy
STEEPED in the crimson sunlight | |
| Reposed the golden plain, | |
| As if the yellow cornfields | |
| Were bathed in blood-red rain; | |
| Full darkly loomed Kyffhäuser | 5 |
| Through fog which slowly broke, | |
| When first the spellbound Kaiser | |
| From his long sleep awoke. | |
| |
| A look of royal anger | |
| On his vassals round he threw: | 10 |
| “I slept in deepest slumber, | |
| Who dared such deed to do? | |
| Who, braving all my fury, | |
| From sleep has dragged me so, | |
| And called in hollow accents, | 15 |
| ‘Woe, Hohenstaufen, woe!’ | |
| |
| “Who caused that sudden clashing | |
| Of steel on steel to rise? | |
| Who held the gaudy banners | |
| Before my startled eyes? | 20 |
| Who has my dreams distracted | |
| With fleeting forms of air, | |
| And blood-red ensigns floating | |
| On a wide market-square? | |
| |
| “There I beheld a monarch,— | 25 |
| High on a throne he sate; | |
| He glared upon a scaffold | |
| With eyes of wrath and hate. | |
| The black-draped scaffold towered | |
| Midst crowding heads and spears, | 30 |
| And on its height were standing | |
| Two youths of tender years. | |
| |
| “Beside them on the scaffold, | |
| Boding a deed of blood, | |
| A grisly grim attendant, | 35 |
| The headsman, waiting stood. | |
| He stood in cap of scarlet | |
| And in a scarlet frock; | |
| He leaned upon his weapon, | |
| Before him was the block! | 40 |
| |
| “Sudden the shrilly clarions | |
| Rang out with murderous glee; | |
| Hear you the king’s commandment? | |
| His signal do you see? | |
| One captive flung his gauntlet | 45 |
| Among the crowd below, | |
| Which murmured like the ocean | |
| When the hoarse storm-winds blow! | |
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| “His head that first pale victim | |
| Lays firm upon the oak; | 50 |
| See, from his slender body | |
| ’T is severed with a stroke! | |
| Far spouts the blood’s red fountain, | |
| The king gives sign anew, | |
| And ghastly smiles, as quickly | 55 |
| The second’s head falls too! | |
| |
| “Lo! where the heads are rolling | |
| On mine own shattered shield,— | |
| Who has this fearful vision, | |
| To scare my sleep, revealed? | 60 |
| Who, braving all my fury, | |
| From slumber dragged me so, | |
| And called in hollow accents, | |
| ‘Woe, Hohenstaufen, woe!’” | |
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| The dwarfs, all pale and trembling, | 65 |
| Bow down before the king,— | |
| “We know not who, O monarch, | |
| Would dare do such a thing—” | |
| That very time at Naples | |
| The young Conradin stood | 70 |
| With Frederic of Suabia | |
| On a scaffold dripping blood! | |
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| ’T was then the bearded monarch | |
| Upstarted from his place; | |
| Saw dimly in Kyffhäuser | 75 |
| The end of his own race; | |
| He growled in angry wonder, | |
| And bent again his head, | |
| A century had nearly | |
| Of his long slumber fled. | 80 |
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