Heard are the softly flapping wings Of unseen bats. The shimmer flicks Upon the carven panellings The banners of the heretics.
The stiffly bended gauntlets play In the dull glow incarnadine, And, creaking, to the helmets gray Pour bumpers full of Rhenish wine;
Or with their daggers keen of blade Carve boars upon the plates of gold. The corridor's uncanny shade Hath clamours vague and manifold.
The orgy waxes riotsome-- One could not hear God's voice for it-- For when a phantom sups from home, What wrong if he carouse a bit?
Now every ghostly care they drown With jokes and jeers and loud guffaws. A wine-cascade is running down Each rusty helmet's iron jaws.
The full and rounded hauberks bulge, And to the neck the river mounts. Their eyes with liquid fire effulge. They're howling drunk, these valiant counts!
One through the salad idly wields A foot; another scolds the sick. Some like the lions on their shields With gaping mouths the fancy trick.
In voice still hoarse from silence long In the tomb's dampness and restraint, Max playfully intones a song Of thirteen hundred, crude and quaint.
Albrecht, of quarrelsome repute, Stirs right and left a war intense, And drubs about with fist and foot, As once he drubbed the Saracens.
And heated Fritz his helmet doffs, Not deeming he's a headless trunk. Then down pell-mell mid roars and scoffs Together roll the phantoms drunk.
Ah! 'T is a hideous battle-ground, Where pots and weapons bang and scud, Where every dead man through some wound Doth vomit victuals up for blood.
And Bjorn observes them, sad of eye, And haggard, while athwart the panes The dawn comes creeping stealthily, With blue, thin lights, and darkness wanes.
The prostrate mass of rusty brown Pales like a torch in daylight's room, Until the drunkest pours him down At last the stirrup-cup of doom.
The cock crows loud. And with the day Once more with haughty mien and bold, Their revel-weary heads they lay Upon their marble pillows cold.
Now twice my watch have I taken, And twice as I've gazing sat, The hand has pointed unshaken To one--and it's long past that!
The clock's light cadences linger. The sun-dial laughs from the lawn, And points with a long, gaunt finger The path that its shade has drawn.