rnish,
    Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.--SHAKESPEARE.




        A LEGEND OF BREGENZ


    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 cr