The Poetical Works of William Motherwell/Lays of the Langbein Ritters
Lays of The Lang Bein Ritters.
Among the ungarnered Poems left by the late Mr Motherwell, I have found certain wild, romantic, and melancholy measures, fittingly enshrined in a story of Teutonic spirit and colouring, entitled 'The Doomed Nine, or the Lang Bein Ritters.' To publish the prose narrative lies not within the purpose of this selection—but the songs, which conveyed to us a very singular pleasure in days endeared to memory by the delights of friendship, may not inaptly form the concluding strains of a volume whose general aspect accords well (too well) with the Poet's cast of thought and premature departure.—K.