As the Piper turned from the High Street
To where the Weser rolled its waters
Right in the way of their sons and daughters!
However, he turned from South to West,

They made a decree that lawyers never
Should think their records dated duly
If, after the day of the month and year,
These words did not as well appear,

On the Twenty-second of July,
Thirteen hundred and seventy-six: "
And the better in memory to fix

And to Koppelberg Hill his steps addressed, 220 "And so long after what happened here
And after him the children pressed;
Great was the joy in every breast.
"He never can cross that mighty top!
He's forced to let the piping drop,
And we shall see our children stop!"
When, lo, as they reached the mountain-side,
A wondrous portal opened wide,

As if a cavern was suddenly hollowed;

And the Piper advanced and the children fol-
lowed,

And when all were in to the very last,
The door in the mountain-side shut fast.
Did I say all? No! One was lame,
And could not dance the whole of the way;
And in after years if you would blame
His sadness, he was used to say,-

230

270

The place of the children's last retreat,
They called it, the Pied Piper's Street-
Where any one playing on pipe or tabour
Was sure for the future to lose his labour. 280
Nor suffered they hostelry or tavern

To shock with mirth a street so solemn;
But opposite the place of the cavern
They wrote the story on a column.
And on the great church-window painted
The same, to make the world acquainted
How their children were stolen away,
And there it stands to this very day.
And I must not omit to say
That in Transylvania there's a tribe
Of alien people who ascribe
The outlandish ways and dress
On which their neighbours lay such stress,
To their fathers and mothers having risen
240 Out of some subterraneous prison

"It's dull in our town since my playmates
left!

I can't forget that I'm bereft
Of all the pleasant sights they see,
Which the Piper also promised me.
For he led us, he said, to a joyous land,
Joining the town and just at hand,
Where waters gushed and fruit-trees grew
And flowers put forth a fairer hue,
And everything was strange and new;
The sparrows were brighter than peacocks here,
And their dogs outran our fallow deer,
And honey-bees had lost their stings,
And horses were born with eagles' wings;
And just as I became assured

My lame foot would be speedily cured,
The music stopped and I stood still,
And found myself outside the hill,
Left alone against my will,

To go now limping as before,

And never hear of that country more!''

XIV

Alas, alas for Hamelin!

There came into many a burgher's pate
A text which says that heaven's gate
Opes to the rich at as easy rate
As the needle's eye takes a camel in!

250

260

The Mayor sent East, West, North and South,
To offer the Piper, by word of mouth,

Wherever it was men's lot to find him,
Silver and gold to his heart's content,
If he'd only return the way he went,

And bring the children behind him.
But when they saw 't was a lost endeavour,
And Piper and dancers were gone forever,

Into which they were trepanned3
Long time ago in a mighty band
Out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land,
But how or why, they don't understand.

X7

290

Not a word to each other; we kept the great | So, we were left galloping, Joris and I, pace Past Looz and past Tongres, no cloud in the sky; Neck by neck, stride by stride, never changing The broad sun above laughed a pitiless laugh, our place; 'Neath our feet broke the brittle bright stubble like chaff;

I turned in my saddle and made its girths tight,

40

Till over by Dalhem a dome-spire sprang white, Then shortened each stirrup, and set the pique4 And "Gallop," gasped Joris, "for Aix is in

So Joris broke silence with, "Yet there is Then I cast loose my buffcoat, each holster time!''

let fall,

And his low head and crest, just one sharp ear And all I remember is-friends flocking round

bent back

Found the one gift of which fortune bereft us,
Lost all the others she lets us devote;

* This poem was suggested by Wordsworth's
change from very radical views to conserva-
tism and Toryism. Browning later apologized
for its great injustice to Wordsworth: it was
the effusion of "hasty youth," and was, more-
over, not intended as an exact characteriza-
tion. Compare Browning's poem, Why I am a
Liberal, below. Whittier's poem, Ichabod, on
the defection of Daniel Webster, is written
in a similar strain.

They, with the gold to give, doled him out While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough silver, In England-now!

We that had loved him so, followed him, hon- Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the oured him,

Pardoned in heaven, the first by the throne! Then to his poor trade he turned,

Might praise him that great way, and die!" He grew a priest, and now stood here.

And he: "Since the King, O my friend, for | On the great cross-support in the centre, that thy countenance sent,

goes to each side;

caught in his pangs

30

Neither drunken nor eaten have we; nor until He relaxed not a muscle, but hung there as, from his tent Thou return with the joyful assurance the And waiting his change, the king-serpent all King liveth yet, Shall our lip with the honey be bright, with Far away from his kind, in the pine, till the water be wet, deliverance come

heavily hangs,

For out of the black mid-tent's silence, a space With the spring-time,2-so agonized Saul, drear and stark, blind and dumb.

of three days,

"Yet now my heart leaps, O beloved! God's So docile they come to the pen-door till folding

On thy gracious gold hair, and those lilies still They are white and untorn by the bushes, for living and blue

lo, they have fed

Just broken to twine round thy harp-strings, Where the long grasses stifle the water within as if no wild heat

Were now raging to torture the desert!"

III

Then I, as was meet,

Knelt down to the God of my fathers, and

the stream's bed;

rose on my feet,

VI

Hands and knees on the slippery grass-patch, Till for boldness they fight one another; and

all withered and gone,

then, what has weight

That extends to the second enclosure, I groped To set the quick jerboa3 a-musing outside his