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.