To harbor safe. Ho, ho! With beckoning hands,
Wind-driven, loud they cry--My mates! the lands,
The golden lands we seek, are ours!'

"In Earth's brown bosom pent, the hardy wight
Long in deep caverns dwells; and hard doth smite
The rocky caves. Nor sees the golden spoil
Through weary days of wasted, lonely toil.
From his wild eyes, far-flying hides the prize,
Till desperate, angered, worn, aloud he cries:
'Vain, vain! The caves my labor answer not,
Nor yellow threads, that gleam in any grot.
Hard, cruel, silent hills, my strength ye mock,
And seal your treasures close in flinty rock;
So, after toilsome years, sweet wife, I bring
To thee no sparkling love-gift. Nay, nor anything
To cheer our failing time.'

"Then round him hears
He sturdy blows, and listening, almost fears
He dreams. But swift the echoes rise, and still
More loudly roll, and quick replies the hill.
Reverberant, through all the caverns round,
The uproar swells, and fills the world with sound.
Then lists he once again. 'With lusty shocks
Your hammers ring against the hard-ribbed rocks--
Goblins!' he boldly shouts, 'smite! smite! ye bring
My treasure forth, dark-beating goblin wing
Among the gleaming caves, whose dusk veins hold
The gold. At last! At last, the ruddy gold!'

"And lone, in stricken fields, the husbandman
Sits pale, with anxious eyes that hopeless scan
The burning sky. Hot lie the glimmering plain
And uplands parched. 'Behold, the bending grain,
Fair in the springtide, now is dead; and dry
The brooks. If yet the rainfall fail, we die
Of famine sore. No bleating lambs I hear in fold
Safe shut, nor lowing kine; nor on the wold
The whir of mounting bird: Nor thrives about me
Any living thing. So seemeth, end must be
Of striving. Since all the land is cursed,
What matter if by famine scorched, or thirst,
We die?' he saith.
"And thick the warlock swarm
Above his head, wide-spreading dark wings warm,
Fast flitted by. The waiting fields he stands
Among. And laughing, claps exultant hands.
'Good speed ye, Sprites! that bring the welcome cloud
And pile the vapors thick,' he shouts aloud.
Oh! sweet shall bloom again the bending grain,
And clothe afresh the wide, the wasted plain.
The clouds sweep