Tis in the woody vales of Laach the hunters horn is wound, And fairly flies the falcon, and deeply bays the hound; But little recks Count Siegfried for hawk or quarry now: A weight is on his noble heart, a gloom is on his brow. Oh! he hath driven from his homehe cannot from his mind A lady, ah! the loveliest of all her lovely kind; His wife, his Genofeva!and at the word of one, The blackest traitor ever looked upon the blessed sun. He hath let the hunters hurry by, and turned his steed aside, And ridden where the blue lake spreads its waters calm and wide, And lo! beneath a linden-tree, there sits a lady fair, But like some savage maiden clad in sylvan pageant rare. Her kirtles of the dappled skin of the rapid mountain roe; A quiver at her back she bears, beside her lies a bow; Her feet are bare, her golden hair adown her shoulders streams, And in her lap a rosy child is smiling in its dreams.
The count had never thought to see his wife again. He imagined that she had long since starved to death or been devoured; and now, finding her alive, his pulses quicken. He knows well that only a miracle could have preserved her during all this period of estrangement, and reflects that on behalf of the virtuous alone are miracles worked. Seeing herein ample proof of Genofevas innocence, he welcomes her back to his arms and with beating heart bears her to the castle:
Oh! there was joy in Andernach upon that happy night: The palace rang with revelry, the city blazed with light: And when the moon her paler beams upon the turrets shed, Above the Roman gate was seen the traitor Golos head.
Doubtless it was the thaumaturgic element in this pretty romance which chiefly made it popular among its pristine audiences, yet it was probably the pathos with which it is coloured that granted it longevity, causing it to be handed down from generation to generation long before the advent of the printing-press.