mind adjusts a thought, is gone,
And in your soul you wonder if a dream.
Some thirty years ago it was;--and I,
Commissioner of the Duke--(no sinecure
I can assure you)--had scarce reached the age
Of thirty,--that we sat here at our wine;
And 't was through me that Rudolf,--whom at first,
From some rash words dropped then in argument,
The foresterhood was like to be denied,--
Was then enfellowed. "Yes," said I, "he's young.
Kurt, he is young; but see, a wiry frame;
A chamois footing and a face for deeds;
An eye that likes me not; too quick to turn;
But that may be the restless soul within;
A soul perhaps with virtues that have been
Severely tried and could not stand the test;
These be thy care, Kurt; and if not too deep
In vices of the flesh, discover them,
As divers bring lost riches up from ooze.
Thou hast a daughter; let him be thy son."
A year thereafter was it that I heard
Of Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe;
Then their betrothal. And it was from this,--
Good Mother Mary! how she haunts me still!
Sweet Ilsabe! whose higher womanhood,
True as the touchstone which philosophers feign
Transmutes to gold base metals it may touch,
Had turned to good all evil in this man,--
Surmised I of the excellency which
Refinement of her purer company,
And contact with her innocence, had resolved
His fiery nature to, conditioning slave.
And so I came from Brunswick--as, you know,
Is custom of the Duke or, by his seal
Commissioned proxy, his commissioner--
To test the marksmanship of Rudolf, who
Succeeded Kurt with marriage of his child,
An heir of Kuno.--He?--Greatgrandfather
Of Kurt; and of this forestkeepership
The first possessor; thus established here--
Or this the tale they tell on winter nights:
Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train,
Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who came,--
Grandfather of the father of our Duke,--
With much magnificence of knights and squires,
Great velvet-vestured nobles, cloaked and plumed,
To hunt Thuringian deer. Then morn,--too quick
To bid good-morrow,--was too slow for these,
And on the wind-trod hills recumbent yawned
Disturbed an hour too soon; all sleepy-eyed,
Like some young milkmaid whom the cock hath roused,
Who sits and rubs stiff eyes that still will close.
Horns sang and deer-hounds tugged a whimpering