“Our master ne’er sent a poor monk from his door,
And though he is absent, I bid you come in,
Come in, worthy fathers, be fed from his store.”
“God bless now thy master, his house and his field!
The Lord will reward him for what he has done;
Not a mouthful of food have we had to-day,
We were lost in the mountains and woods, my son.”
The servant led on, and the monks came behind,
“Reverend fathers,” he said, “the kitchen is warm;
Come sit by the fire, and eat to your fill—
’Tis better than straying without in the storm.
Were our master at home, you would sup in the hall,
But gladly we’ll give you the best that we can.”
“My son,” said the monk, “we are easy to please,
Who follow the footsteps of ‘The Son of Man.’”
They sit in the kitchen, one young and one old,
And eat of the food that the servants have brought.
The wind down the chimney howls dreary and wild,
Like the souls of the lost who evil have wrought.
“’Tis a terrible night,” said the wan old monk,
“It reminds me indeed of a night long past,
Of a terrible night when our Domherr died—
Ah, years ago in the beginning of fast.
The whirlwind was howling—the night it was dark.
I sat by his bed, and I counted my beads.
He knew he must die, for a ghost had appeared,
A ghost of his family in deep widow’s weeds.”
“A ghost, reverend father! and how could that be?”
“I know not, my children, the legend is old,
And awful indeed, as the whirlwind to-night,
I can but relate you the tale I was told.
The daughter of a noble line,
In Neuhausen she saw the light,
Where all her childish years were spent,
In innocent and pure delight.
Beloved of all, with maiden grace,
She grew up like a flower fair,
And many were the youths who came,
And praised her face, and praised her hair.
On one alone her father smiled,
A goodly youth, John Lichtenstein.
And when she reached her nineteenth year,
He told the youth, the girl is thine.
