They come, the shapes of joy and wo, The airy crowds of long-ago, The dreams and fancies known of yore, That have been and shall be no more. They change the cloisters of the night Into a garden of delight; _They make the dark and dreary hours_ _Open and blossom into flowers!_ I would not sleep, I love to be Again in their fair company; But ere my lips can bid them stay, They pass and vanish quite away. Just as the prince, in his hunger for rest, has asserted Sweeter the undisturbed and deep Tranquillity of endless sleep, Lucifer appears, in his accustomed dress as a traveling physician, and accompanied by his usual sign, a flash of lightning. He taunts and cajoles his victim into drinking what he is pleased to call his water of life. The immediate effect of this Satanic liquid is like that which the cordial of the foul hag communicates to the Faust of Goethe: It is like a draught of fire! Through every vein I feel again The fever of youth, the soft desire; A rapture that is almost pain Throbs in my heart and fills my brain! O joy! O joy! I feel The band of steel That so long and heavily has pressed Upon my breast Uplifted, and the malediction Of my affliction Is taken from me, and my weary breast At length finds rest. We are next transferred as spectators to the courtyard of the castle, and a most beautiful scene occurs between Hubert, Prince Henry’s seneschal, and Walter, the Minnesinger, a capital embodiment of the knightly poet of the middle ages. The prince, it seems, has relapsed from the glory of his exaltation, has become more soul-sick than ever, has fallen under the malediction of the church; and has gone forth into disgrace and banishment. We give the concluding passage of this scene, where Walter speaks of the “beings of the wind” that attend the poet, and, leaning over the parapet of the castle, describes the landscape: _Walter._ I would a moment here remain. But you, good Hubert, go before, Fill me a goblet of May-drink, As aromatic as the May From which it steals the breath away, And which he loved so well of yore; It is of him that I would think. You shall attend me, when I call, In the ancestral banquet-hall. Unseen companions, guests of air, You cannot wait on, will be there; They taste not food, they drink not wine, But their soft eyes look into mine, And their lips speak to me, and all The vast and shadowy banquet-hall Is full of looks and words divine! _Leaning over the parapet._