Poem by Madison Julius Cawein

Hackelnberg

When down the Hartz the echoes swarm
He rides beneath the sounding storm
With mad "halloo!" and wild alarm
 Of hound and horn - a wonder,
With his hunter black as night,
Ban-dogs fleet and fast as light,
And a stag as silver white
Drives before, like mist, in flight,
 Glimmering 'neath the bursten thunder.

The were-wolf shuns his ruinous track,
Long-howling hid in braken black;
Around the forests reel and crack
 And mountain torrents tumble;
And the spirits of the air
Whistling whirl with scattered hair,
Teeth that flash and eyes that glare,
'Round him as he chases there
 With a noise of rains that rumble.

From thick Thuringian thickets growl
Fierce, fearful monsters black and foul;
And close before him a stritch-owl
 Wails like a ghost unquiet:
Then the clouds aside are driven
And the moonlight, stormy striven.
Falls around the castle riven
Of the Dumburg, and the heaven
 Maddens then with blacker riot.

1. In the Mountains
2. The Iron Cross
3. Communicants
4. Gertrude
5. Riders in the Night

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