Taste summer air, cooled through yon shadowy

alleys?

Anon I'll join you. (Exit LADY Montreville.)

Vyvyan.

We will wait your leisure.

A most compassionate and courteous lady --
How couldst thou call her proud?

Eveline.

Nay, ever henceforth,

For the soft pity she hath shown to thee,

I'll love her as a mother.

1 SCUR'VY. Bad; sorry.

IN-STINCTIVE. Natural; involuntary. 3 EL DO-RÄ'Dō. A proverbial term for an imaginary country abounding in gold or other rich products of nature.

of enchanting and charming by their song any one who heard them.

5 CAI'TIFF. Base.

6 HŎR'RENT. Pointed outwards; stand. ing out like bristles.

SI'REN. One of the three sea-nymphs 7 LIV'ID. Discolored; black and blue.

who were believed to have the power

LVA LEGEND OF BREGENZ.1

ADELAIDE A. PROCTOR.

1. GIRT 2 round with rugged mountains
The fair Lake Constance lies;

In her blue heart reflected

Shine back the starry skies;
And watching each white cloudlet
Float silently and slow,

You think a piece of heaven.
Lies on our earth below!

2. And Bregenz, that quaint3 city
Upon the Tyrol shore,

Has stood above Lake Constance

A thousand years and more.

Of how the town was saved one night,

Three hundred years ago.

3. Far from her home and kindred,
A Tyrol maid had fled,

To serve in the Swiss valleys,
And toil for daily bread;

She served kind, gentle masters,
Nor asked for rest or change:

Her friends seemed no more new ones,
Their speech seemed no more strange.

4. She spoke no more of Bregenz
With longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded
In a deep mist of years;
But when at morn and evening

She knelt before God's throne,
The accents of her childhood
Rose to her lips alone.

5. And so she dwelt, the valley
More peaceful year by year,
When suddenly strange portents 5
Of some great deed seemed near.
The men seemed stern and altered,
With looks cast on the ground;
With anxious faces, one by one,
The women gathered round.

6. One day out in the meadow,

With strangers from the town,
Some secret plan discussing,
The men walked up and down;
Yet now and then seemed watching
A strange, uncertain gleam,
That looked like lances 'mid the trees
That stood below the stream.

7. At eve they all assembled;

Then care and doubt were fled;

With jovial laugh they feasted;
The board was nobly spread.
The elder of the village

Rose up, his glass in hand,

And cried, "We drink the downfall
Of an accurséd land!

8. "The night is growing darker;
Ere one more day is flown,
Bregenz, our foemen's stronghold,
Bregenz shall be our own!"
The women shrank in terror
(Yet Pride, too, had her part),
But one poor Tyrol maiden

Felt death within her heart.

9. Nothing she heard around her

(Though shouts rang forth again);
Gone were the green Swiss valleys,
The pasture and the plain;
Before her eyes one vision,

And in her heart one cry,
That said, "Go forth; save Bregenz;

And then, if need be, die!"

10. With trembling haste and breathless, With noiseless step, she sped; Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed;

She loosed the strong white charger,
That fed from out her hand;

She mounted, and she turned his head
Towards her native land.

11. Out

out into the darkness
Faster, and still more fast;
The smooth grass flies behind her.
The chestnut wood is past;
She looks up; clouds are heavy;
Why is her steed so slow?
Scarcely the wind beside them.
Can pass them as they go.

12. "Faster!" she cries, "O, faster!" Eleven the church-bells chime:

"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz
And bring me there in time!"
But louder than bells' ringing,
Or lowing of the kine,
Grows nearer in the midnight
The rushing of the Rhine.

13. Shall not the roaring waters

Their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror;
She leans upon his neck
To watch the flowing darkness;
The bank is high and steep;

One pause he staggers forward,

And plunges in the deep.

14. She strives to pierce the blackness,
And looser throws the rein;
Her steed must breast the waters
That dash above his mane.

How gallantly, how nobly,

He struggles through the foam!