She served kind, gentle masters, 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 She spoke no more of Bregenz, Of Austrian war and strife; Yet, when her master's children And so she dwelt: the valley While farmers, heedless of their fields, 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 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 watchirg 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, "The night is growing darker, 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 And in her heart one cry, With trembling haste and breathless, With noiseless step, she sped; Horses and weary cattle Were standing in the shed; She loosed the strong, white charger, That fed from out her hand, She mounted, and she turned his head Toward her native land. Out-out into the darkness Faster, and still more fast; The chestnut wood is past; "Faster!" she cries, "O faster!" "O God," she cries, "help Bregens, Shall not the roaring waters Their headlong gallop check? The steed draws back in terror,— . To watch the flowing darkness; The bank is high and steep; One pause -- -he staggers forward, And plunges in the deep. She strives to pierce the blackness, Her steed must breast the waters That dash above his mane. He struggles through the foam, Up the steep bank he bears er, To meet the news she brings. Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight Defiance greets the army That marches on the land. And if to deeds heroic Should endless fame be paid, Bregenz does well to honor The noble Tyrol maid. Three hundred years are vanished, And yet upon the hill An old stone gateway rises, To do her honor still. And there, when Bregenz women Sit spinning in the shade, They see in quaint old carving The Charger and the Maid. And when, to guard old Bregenz, "Nine," "ten," “eleven," he cries aloud, When midnight pauses in the skies, He calls the maiden's name! Adelaide Procter The Grandmother's Apology. And Willy, my eldest born, is gone, you say, little Annie? For, Annie, you see, her father was not the man to save; Why do you look at me, Annie? you think I am hard and cold; I cannot weep for Willy, nor can I weep for the rest; For I remember a quarrel I had with your father, my dear, Willy had not been down to the farm for a week and a day; And I cried myself well-nigh blind, and all of an evening late climb'd to the top of the garth, and stood by the road at the gate The moon like a rick on fire was rising over the dale, And whit, whit, whit, in the bush beside me, chirrupt the night ingale. |