Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine Part 33

The gold, now withdrawn from its place of concealment, proved to be a goodly store, and with it the Emperor had no difficulty in raising another army. Such was the courage and confidence of his new troops that the first battle they fought resulted in victory. But the most valiant stand was made by the erstwhile charcoal-burner, who found on that field the opportunity of which he had long dreamt. The Emperor showed his recognition of the gallant services by knighting the young man on the field of battle. On the eminence whither the old hermit had led him the knight built a castle which was occupied by himself and his successors for many generations.

And thus did the charcoal-burner become the knight of Zahringen, the friend of his Emperor, the first of a long line of ill.u.s.trious knights, honoured and exalted beyond his wildest dreams.

Conclusion

With this legend we close on a brighter and more hopeful note than is usually a.s.sociated with legends of the Rhine. The reader may have observed in perusing these romances how closely they mirror their several environments. For the most part those which are gay and buoyant in spirit have for the places of their birth slopes where is prisoned the suns.h.i.+ne which later sparkles in the wine-cup and inspires song and cheerfulness. Those, again, which are sombre and tragic have as background the gloomy forest, the dark and windy promontory which overhangs the darker river, or the secluded nunnery. In such surroundings is fostered the germ of tragedy, that feeling of the inevitable which is inherent in all great literature. It is to a tragic imagination of a lofty type that we are indebted for the greatest of these legends, and he who cannot appreciate their background of gloomy grandeur will never come at the true spirit of that mighty literature of Germany, at once the joy and the despair of all who know it.

Countless songs, warlike and tender, sad and pa.s.sionate, have been penned on the river whose deathless tales we have been privileged to display to the reader. But no such strains of regret upon abandoning its sh.o.r.es have been sung as those which pa.s.sed the lips of the English poet, Byron, and it is fitting that this book should end with lines so appropriate:

Adieu to thee, fair Rhine! How long delighted The stranger fain would linger on his way!

Thine is a scene alike where souls united Or lonely Contemplation thus might stray; And could the ceaseless vultures cease to prey On self-condemning bosoms, it were here, Where Nature, nor too sombre nor too gay, Wild but not rude, awful yet not austere, Is to the mellow Earth as Autumn to the year.

Adieu to thee again! a vain adieu!

There can be no farewell to scene like thine; The mind is colour?d by thy every hue; And if reluctantly the eyes resign Their cherish?d gaze upon thee, lovely Rhine!

?Tis with the thankful heart of parting praise; More mighty spots may rise, more glaring s.h.i.+ne, But none unite in one attaching maze The brilliant, fair, and soft,?the glories of old days.

The negligently grand, the fruitful bloom Of coming ripeness, the white city?s sheen, The rolling stream, the precipice?s gloom, The forest?s growth, and Gothic walls between, The wild rocks shaped as they had turrets been, In mockery of man?s art: and there withal A race of faces happy as the scene, Whose fertile bounties here extend to all, Still springing o?er thy banks, though Empires near them fall.