Mazelli, and Other Poems Part 14

On, on came the chief, in his fierceness and wrath, Nor saw he the wide gulf that yawned in his path,-- And soon, in the depths of its fathomless tide, The warrior and war-steed were laid side by side.

And the mountaineer tells how in sullen despair, His ghost, imannealed of its sins, lingers there; Ever watching, pale, silent, untiring, unmoved, The bright golden crown of the maiden he loved.

A diver once, lured by the wealth of the prize, Sought out the deep cave where it lay, and still lies, And where, chained by a spirit-breathed spell, it shall stay, Till the whirlpool and mountain alike pa.s.s away.

Twice he rose with the crown, till its gleaming points blazed On the eyes of the wondering thousands who gazed, Twice it fell from his grasp, and sank quickly again To the bed where for years undisturbed it had lain.

He followed,--this effort the treasure may earn-- But vainly they watch who await his return; A red hue of blood tinged the deep waters o'er, But the diver came up from their dark depths no more.

1. Bohdo. This hero, as his character is drawn in the original legend, or tradition, from which the material of these verses was taken (a tradition which gives the popular account of the formation of an immense mark or cavity in a rock, called the "Rosstrappe" or "Horse's footstep,") is worthy of being enrolled among Odin's Berserker.

2. Nimrod. "A mighty hunter before the Lord." He built Babylon and founded that royal line which terminated with the death of Sardanapalus; whose gentleness and aversion to blood spilling, together with his pa.s.sion for his "Ionian Myrrha," cost him an empire, and gained him an immortality.

3. "It was named," says the tradition, "The Devil's dancing-place, from the triumph there of the spirits of h.e.l.l."