A LEGEND OF BREGENZ

By Adelaide Anne Procter



Girt round with rugged mountains

The fair Lake Constance lies;

In her blue heart reflected,

Shine back the starry skies;



And, watching each white cloudlet

Float silently and slow,

You think a piece of Heaven

Lies on our earth below!



Midnight is there: and Silence,

Enthroned in Heaven, looks down

Upon her own calm mirror,

Upon a sleeping town:



For Bregenz, that quaint city

Upon the Tyrol shore,

Has stood above Lake Constance

A thousand years and more.



Her battlements and towers,

From off their rocky steep,

Have cast their trembling shadow

For ages on the deep.



Mountain and lake and valley

A sacred legend know,

Of how the town was saved one night

Three hundred years ago.



Far from her home and kindred

A Tyrol maid had fled,

To serve in the Swiss valleys,

And toil for daily bread;



And every year that fleeted

So silently and fast

Seemed to bear farther from her

The memory of the Past.



She spoke no more of Bregenz

With longing and with tears;

Her Tyrol home seemed faded

In a deep mist of years;



Yet, when her master's children

Would clustering round her stand

She sang them ancient ballads

Of her own native land;



And when at morn and evening

She knelt before God's throne,

The accents of her childhood

Rose to her lips alone.



And so she dwelt: the valley

More peaceful year by year;

When suddenly strange portents

Of some great deed seemed near.



One day, out in the meadow,

With strangers from the town

Some secret plan discussing,

The men walked up and down.



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.



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

Toward 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

Toward 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!



DEFINITIONS:

Fleeted, passed quickly.

Portents, signs, indications.

Jovial, joyful, gladsome.

Board, dinner table.

Charger, a horse for battle or parade.

Serf, slave, serving man.



EXERCISE:

On the map of Europe, find Lake Constance, Tyrol, Bregenz.

What are the mountains called which surround Lake Constance?

Where is the Rhine?

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