"Does the young mother in child-birth dead Rise in her shroud from her lonely bed, For the sake of the child she has left behind? To mock them (they say) makes the dead ones grieve, Let's see if I cannot her work relieve, Or she no end to her toil may find." So spake he, when something, with movement slow, Stirs in the deep-dug grave below, And in its trailing shroud comes out; And the little garments that infants have It hangs and stretches on gate and grave, On rail and trellis, the yard about. The rest of the buried in sleep repose, That nothing of waking or trouble knows, For the woman the sleep of the grave is killed; Her leaden sleep, each midnight hour, Flees, and her limbs regain their power, And she hastes as to tend her new-born child. All with rash spite the watchman views, And with cruel laughter the form pursues, As he leans from the belfrey's narrow height, And in sinful scorn on the tower rails Linen and sheets and bands he trails, Mocking her acts in the moon's wan light. Lo, with swift steps, foreboding doom, From the churchyard's edge o'er grave and tomb The ghost to the tower wends its ways; And climbs and glides, ne'er fearing fall, Up by the ledges, the lofty wall, Fixing the sinner with fearful gaze. The watcher grows pale, and with hasty hand, Tears from the tower the shrouds and bands; Vainly! That threatening grin draws nigh! With a trembling hand he tolls the hour, And the skeleton down from the belfry-tower, Shattered and crumbling, falls from high. This story overlaps the great cycle of popular belief which treats of the help given by a dead mother to her bereaved child. They say in Germany, when the sheets are ruffled in the bed of a motherless infant, that the mother has lain beside it and suckled it. Kindred superstitions stretch through the world. The sin of the Burgeis watchman is that of heartless malice, but it stops short of actual robbery, which is perhaps the reason why he escapes with his life, having the presence of mind to toll forth the first hour of day, when-- Whether in sea or fire, in earth or air, The extravagant and erring spirit hies To his confine.