THE COUNT OF GREIERS.

259

Then hand in hand departing, with dance and roundelay, Through hamlet after hamlet, they lead the Count away. They dance through wood and meadow, they dance across

the linn,

Till the mighty Alpine summits have shut the music in.

The second morn is risen, and now the third is come; Where stays the Count of Greiers? has he forgot his home? Again the evening closes, in thick and sultry air;

There's thunder on the mountains, the storm is gathering there.

The cloud has shed its waters, the brook comes swollen down;
You see it by the lightning-a river wide and brown.
Around a struggling swimmer the eddies dash and roar,
Till, seizing on a willow, he leaps upon the shore.

Here am I cast by tempests far from your mountain dell. Amid our evening dances the bursting deluge fell. Ye all, in cots and caverns, have 'scaped the water-spout, While me alone the tempest o'erwhelmed and hurried out.

"Farewell, with thy glad dwellers, green vale among the rocks! Farewell the swift sweet moments, in which I watched thy flocks!

Why rocked they not my cradle in that delicious spot,

That garden of the happy, where Heaven endures me not?