My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."
"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the aged gray willows deceiving thy sight."
"I love thee, I'm charmed by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."
The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child:
He reaches his courtyard with toil and with dread,—
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.
JOHANNA SEBUS.
[To the memory of an excellent and beautiful girl of seventeen, belonging to the village of Brienen, who perished on the 13th of January, 1809, whilst giving help on the occasion of the breaking up of the ice on the Rhine, and the bursting of the dam of Claverham.]
The dam breaks down, the ice-plain growls,
The floods arise, the water howls.
"I'll bear thee, mother, across the swell,
'Tis not yet high, I can wade right well."
"Remember us, too! in what danger are we!
Thy fellow lodger and children three!
The trembling woman!—Thou'rt going away!"
She bears the mother across the spray.
