Dark the seventh sad night descends; Rivers swell, and rain-streams pour; While the deafening thunder lends All the terrors of its roar. At the worst part of his dreary wandering over an unknown and gloomy country, Frederick suddenly sees a light far away. This seems to him, as it seemed in Buchanan's ballad to the soul of Judas, a light of hope. He goes to the light, and finds himself in front of a vast and ruinous looking church. Inside there is a light; he leaps down from his horse, descends some steps, and enters the building. Suddenly all is darkness again; he has to feel his way. Long drear vaults before him lie! Glimmering lights are seen to glide!-- "Blessed Mary, hear my cry! Deign a sinner's steps to guide!" Often lost their quivering beam, Still the lights move slow before, Till they rest their ghastly gleam Right against an iron door. He is really in the underground burial place of a church, in the vaults of the dead, but he does not know it. He hears voices. Thundering voices from within, Mixed with peals of laughter, rose; As they fell, a solemn strain Lent its wild and wondrous close! 'Midst the din, he seem'd to hear Voice of friends, by death removed;-- Well he knew that solemn air, 'Twas the lay that Alice loved. Suddenly a great bell booms four times, and the iron door opens. He sees within a strange banquet; the seats are coffins, the tables are draped with black, and the dead are the guests. Alice, in her grave-clothes bound, Ghastly smiling, points a seat; All arose, with thundering sound; All the expected stranger greet. High their meagre arms they wave, Wild their notes of welcome swell; "Welcome, traitor, to the grave! Perjured, bid the light farewell!" I have given the greater part of this strange ballad because of its intrinsic value and the celebrity of its German author. But the part that may have inspired Buchanan is only the part concerning the wandering over the black moor, the light seen in the distance, the ghostly banquet of the dead, and the ruined vaults. A great poet would have easily found in these details the suggestion which Buchanan found for the wandering of Judas to the light and the unexpected vision of the dead assembling to a banquet with him--but only this. The complete transformation of the fancy, the transmutation of the purely horrible into a ghostly beauty and tenderness, is the wonderful thing. After all, this is the chief duty of the poet in this world, to discover beauty even in the ugly, suggestions of beauty even in the cruel and terrible. This Buchanan did once so very well that his work will never be forgotten, but he received thereafter no equal inspiration, and the "Ballad of Judas" remains, alone of its kind, his only real claim to high distinction.