A Legend of Bregenz
By Adelaide Anne Procter
Girt 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!
Midnight is there: and Silence,
Enthroned in Heaven, looks down
Upon her own calm mirror,
Upon a sleeping town:
For Bregenz, that quaint city
Upon the Tyrol shore,
Has stood above Lake Constance
A thousand years and more.
Her battlements and towers,
From off their rocky steep,
Have cast their trembling shadow
For ages on the deep.
Mountain and lake and valley
A sacred legend know,
Of how the town was saved one night
Three hundred years ago.
Far from her home and kindred
A Tyrol maid had fled,
To serve in the Swiss valleys,
And toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted
So silently and fast
Seemed to bear farther from her
The memory of the Past.
She spoke no more of Bregenz
With longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded
In a deep mist of years;
Yet, when her master’s children
Would clustering round her stand
She sang them ancient ballads
Of her own native land;
And when at morn and evening
She knelt before God’s throne,
The accents of her childhood
Rose to her lips alone.
And so she dwelt: the valley
More peaceful year by year;
When suddenly strange portents
Of some great deed seemed near.
One day, out in the meadow,
With strangers from the town
Some secret plan discussing,
The men walked up and down.
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 accursed land!
“The night is growing darker;
Ere one more day is flown,
Bregenz, our foeman’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.
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!”
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
Toward her native land.
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.
“Faster!” she cries, “oh, 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.
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!
And see—in the far distance
Shine out the lights of home!
Up the steep bank he bears her,
And now they rush again
Toward the heights of Bregenz
That tower above the plain.
They reach the gates of Bregenz
Just as the midnight rings,
And out come serf and soldier
To meet the news she brings.
Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight
Her battlements are manned;
Defiance greets the army
That marches on the land.
Three hundred years are vanished,
And yet upon the hill
An old stone gateway rises
To do her honor still.
And there, when Bregenz women
Sit spinning in the shade,
They see in quaint old carving
The Charger and the Maid.
And when, to guard old Bregenz
By gateway, street, and tower,
The warder paces all night long
And calls each passing hour,
“Nine,” “ten,” “eleven,” he cries aloud,
And then (oh, crown of fame!),
When midnight pauses in the skies,
He calls the maiden’s name!
DEFINITIONS:—Fleeted, passed quickly. Portents, signs, indications. Jovial, joyful, gladsome. Board, dinner table. Charger, a horse for battle or parade. Serf, slave, serving man.
EXERCISE.—On the map of Europe, find Lake Constance, Tyrol,
Bregenz. What are the mountains called which surround Lake
Constance? Where is the Rhine?