Blind madness his haughty stomach spurred,
  And he slandered the Godhead with sinful word,

  And strutting in pride he blasphemed, the crowd
  Of servile courtiers applauding loud.

  The King commanded with haughty stare;
  The slave was gone, and again was there.

  Much wealth of gold on his head bare he;
  ’Twas reft from Jehovah’s sanctuary.

  And the King took hold of a sacred cup
  With his impious hand, and they filled it up;

  And he drank to the bottom in one deep draught,
  And loud, the foam on his lips, he laughed: 

  “Jehovah!  Thy glories I spit upon;
  I am the King of Babylon!”

  But scarce had the awful words been said
  When the King’s heart withered with secret dread.

  The boisterous laughter was stifled all,
  And corpselike still did wax the hall;

  Lo! lo! on the whited wall there came
  The likeness of a man’s hand in flame,

  And wrote, and wrote, in letters of flame,
  And wrote and vanished, and no more came.

  The King stark-staring sat, a-quail,
  With knees a-knocking, and face death-pale,

  The satraps’ blood ran cold—­none stirred;
  They sat like statues, without a word.

  The Magians came; but none of them all
  Could read those letters of flame on the wall.

  But in that same night of his vaunting vain
  By his satraps’ hand was Belshazzar slain.

* * * * *

THE PILGRIMAGE TO KEVLAAR[27] (1823)

1

  The mother stood at the window;
    Her son lay in bed, alas! 
  “Will you not get up, dear William,
    To see the procession pass?”

  “O mother, I am so ailing,
    I neither can hear nor see;
  I think of my poor dead Gretchen,
    And my heart grows faint in me.”

  “Get up, we will go to Kevlaar;
    Your book and your rosary take;
  The Mother of God will heal you,
    And cure your heart of its ache.”

  The Church’s banners are waving,
    They are chanting a hymn divine;
  ’Tis at Koeln is that procession,
    At Koeln upon the Rhine.

  With the throng the mother follows;
    Her son she leads with her; and now
  They both of them sing in the chorus,
    “Ever honored, O Mary, be thou!”

2

  The Mother of God at Kevlaar
    Is drest in her richest array;
  She has many a cure on hand there,
    Many sick folk come to her today.

  And her, for their votive offerings,
    The suffering sick folk greet
  With limbs that in wax are molded,
    Many waxen hands and feet.

  And whoso a wax hand offers,
    His hand is healed of its sore;
  And whoso a wax foot offers,
    His foot it will pain him no more.

  To Kevlaar went many on crutches
    Who now on the tight-rope bound,
  And many play now on the fiddle
    Had there not one finger sound.