Fourth Reader

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.
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.
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,
And now they rush again
Towards the heights of Bregenz
That tower above the plain.

They reach the gates of Bregenz
Just as the midnight rings,
And out come serf and soldier
To meet the news she brings.
Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight
Her battlements are manned;
Defiance greets the army
That marches on the land.

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
By gateway, street, and tower,
The warder paces all night long
And calls each passing hour;
“Nine,” “ten,” “eleven,” he cries aloud,
And then (Oh, crown of Fame!),
When midnight pauses in the skies,
He calls the maiden’s name!

    – Adelaide Anne Procter.

GLUCK’S VISITOR

In a secluded and mountainous part of Styria there was, in old time, a valley of the most surprising fertility. It was surrounded on all sides by steep and rocky mountains, rising into peaks, which were always covered with snow, and from which a number of torrents descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westwards over the face of a crag so high that when the sun had set to everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still shone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower of gold. It was, therefore, called by the people of the neighborhood the Golden River. It was strange that none of these streams fell into the valley itself. They all descended on the other side of the mountains, and wound away through broad plains and by populous cities. But the clouds were drawn so constantly to the snowy hills that in time of drought and heat, when all the country round was burnt up, there was still rain in the little valley; and its crops were so heavy, and its hay so high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to every one who beheld it, and was commonly called the Treasure Valley.