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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Switzerland and Austria: Vol. XVI. 1876–79.

Austria: Untersberg

Barbarossa

By Roden Berkeley Wriothesley Noel (1834–1894)

(From The Roses of Bazeilles)

DEEP in a mountain’s caverned hall,

It is whispered low,

Waits in a weird, sepulchral glow

An arméd phantom, crowned and tall,

Whose hoary beard of centuries

Grows on the gray stone where it lies;

While jewelled knights with glittering eyes

Glower round

In trance profound.

Anon, at age-long intervals,

The ghostly king

Sends a raven of sable wing

From his stupendous prison-walls,

To learn how near the fated hour

When he may reassume the power,—

Behold! no raven comes again.

Behold! the raven devours the slain!

Vaults asunder

Burst in thunder!

Lo! in the hall of mirrors yonder,

In a palace consecrate to all

Age-long glories of the Gaul,

A German wears imperial

Purple: Barbarossa lives!

The ghost of a dark age revives,

And the heart of every freeman dies,

Seeing him rise!