3. Far from her home and kindred,

A Tyrol maid had fled,

To serve in the Swiss valleys,
And toil for daily bread;

She served kind, gentle masters,
Nor asked for rest or change;

Her friends seemed no more new ones,
Their speech seemed no more strange.

4. She spoke no more of Bregenz
With longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded
In a deep mist of years;
But when at morn and evening
She knelt before God's throne,
The accents of her childhood
Rose to her lips alone.

5

5. And so she dwelt, the valley
More peaceful year by year,
When suddenly strange portents
Of some great deed seemed near.
The men seemed stern and altered,
With looks cast on the ground;
With anxious faces, one by one,
The women gathered round.

6. One day out in the meadow,

With strangers from the town,
Some secret plan discussing,
The men walked up and down;
Yet now and then seemed watching
A strange, uncertain gleam,
That looked like lances 'mid the trees
That stood below the stream.

7. At eve they all assembled;

Then care and doubt were fled;

With jovial laugh they feasted;
The board was nobly spread.
The elder of the village

Rose up, his glass in hand,

And cried, "We drink the downfall
Of an accursed land!

8. "The night is growing darker;
Ere one more day is flown,
Bregenz, our foemen's stronghold,
Bregenz shall be our own!"
The women shrank in terror
(Yet Pride, too, had her part),
But one poor Tyrol maiden
Felt death within her heart.

9. Nothing she heard around her

(Though shouts rang forth again);
Gone were the green Swiss valleys,
The pasture and the plain;
Before her eyes one vision,

And in her heart one cry,

That said, "Go forth; save Bregenz;
And then, if need be, die!"

10. With trembling haste and breathless, With noiseless step, she sped;

Horses and weary cattle

Were standing in the shed;

She loosed the strong white charger,

That fed from out her hand:

She mounted, and she turned his head
Towards her native land.

11. Out-out into the darkness

Faster, and still more fast;
The smooth grass flies behind her,
The chestnut wood is past;
She looks up; clouds are heavy ;
Why is her steed so slow?
Scarcely the wind beside them
Can pass them as they go.

12. "Faster!" she cries, "O, faster!"
Eleven the church-bells chime :
"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz,
And bring me there in time!"
But louder than bells' ringing,
Or lowing of the kine,
Grows nearer in the midnight
The rushing of the Rhine.

13. Shall not the roaring waters

Their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror;
She leans upon his neck
To watch the flowing darkness ;
The bank is high and steep;
One pause he staggers forward,

And plunges in the deep.

14. She strives to pierce the blackness, And looser throws the rein;

Her steed must breast the waters

That dash above his mane.

How gallantly, how nobly,

He struggles through the foam !

And see

in the far distance

Shine out the lights of home!

15. Up the steep bank he bears her,
And now they rush again
Towards the heights of Bregenz,
That tower above the plain.
They reach the gate of Bregenz
Just as the midnight rings,
And out come serf 6 and soldier
To meet the news she brings.

16. Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight Her battlements are manned;

Defiance greets the army

That marches on the land.

And if to deeds heroic

Should endless fame be paid,
Bregenz does well to honor

The noble Tyrol maid.

17. Three hundred years are vanished, And yet upon the hill

An old stone gateway rises,

To do her honor still.

And there, when Bregenz women
Sit spinning in the shade,
They see, in quaint old carving,
The Charger and the Maid.

18. And when, to guard old Bregenz, By gateway, street, and tower,