eemed 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!"
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;
She loosed the strong white charger, that fed from out her hand,
She mounted, and she turned his head towards her native land.

Out--out into the darkness--faster, and still more fast;
The smooth grass flies behind her, the chestnut wood is past;
She looks up; clouds are heavy: Why is her steed so slow?--
Scarcely the wind beside them can pass them as they go.

"Faster!" she cries. "Oh, faster!" Eleven the church-bells chime;
"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz, and bring me there in time!"
But louder than bells' ringing, or lowing of the kine,
Grows nearer in the midnight the rushing of the Rhine.

Shall not the roaring waters their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror, she leans upon his neck
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, and looser throws the rein;
Her steed must breast the waters that dash above his mane.
How gallantly, how nobly, he struggles through the foam,
And see--in the far distance shine out the lights of home!

Up the steep bank he bears her,