The world seems new and fairer,
All blooming like the rose;
Can Eckart be a sharer
In raptures such as those?
“Ha! Are those tones restoring
My wife and bonny sons?
All that I was deploring,
My lost beloved ones?”
Yet soon his sense collected
Brought doubt within his breast;
These hellish arts detected,
A horror him possess’d.
And now he sees the raging
Of his young princes dear;
Themselves to Hell engaging,
His voice no more they hear.
And forth, in wild commotion,
They rush, not knowing where;
In tumult like the ocean,
When mad his billows are.
Then, as these things assail’d him,
He wist not what to do;
His knighthood almost fail’d him
Amid that hellish crew.
Then to his soul appeareth
The hour the Duke did die;
His friend’s faint prayer he heareth,
He sees his fading eye.
And so his mind’s in armour,
And hope is conquering fear;
When see, the fiendish Charmer
Himself comes piping near!
His sword to draw he essayeth,
And smite the caitiff dead;
But as the music playeth,
His strength is from him fled.
And from the mountains issue
Crowds of distorted forms,
Of Dwarfs a boundless tissue
Come simmering round in swarms,
