Meanwhile from out its ebon case
His violin the Minstrel drew,
And having tuned its strings anew,
Now held it close in his embrace,
And poising in his outstretched hand
The bow, like a magician’s wand,
He paused, and said, with beaming face: 
“Last night my story was too long;
To-day I give you but a song,
An old tradition of the North;
But first, to put you in the mood,
I will a little while prelude,
And from this instrument draw forth
Something by way of overture.”

He played; at first the tones were pure
And tender as a summer night,
The full moon climbing to her height,
The sob and ripple of the seas,
The flapping of an idle sail;
And then by sudden and sharp degrees
The multiplied, wild harmonies
Freshened and burst into a gale;
A tempest howling through the dark,
A crash as of some shipwrecked bark. 
A loud and melancholy wail.

Such was the prelude to the tale
Told by the Minstrel; and at times
He paused amid its varying rhymes,
And at each pause again broke in
The music of his violin,
With tones of sweetness or of fear,
Movements of trouble or of calm,
Creating their own atmosphere;
As sitting in a church we hear
Between the verses of the psalm
The organ playing soft and clear,
Or thundering on the startled ear.

THE MUSICIAN’S TALE

THE BALLAD OF CARMILHAN

I

At Stralsund, by the Baltic Sea,
  Within the sandy bar,
At sunset of a summer’s day,
Ready for sea, at anchor lay
  The good ship Valdemar.

The sunbeams danced upon the waves,
  And played along her side;
And through the cabin windows streamed
In ripples of golden light, that seemed
  The ripple of the tide.

There sat the captain with his friends,
  Old skippers brown and hale,
Who smoked and grumbled o’er their grog,
And talked of iceberg and of fog,
  Of calm and storm and gale.

And one was spinning a sailor’s yarn
  About Klaboterman,
The Kobold of the sea; a spright
Invisible to mortal sight,
  Who o’er the rigging ran.

Sometimes he hammered in the hold,
  Sometimes upon the mast,
Sometimes abeam, sometimes abaft,
Or at the bows he sang and laughed,
  And made all tight and fast.

He helped the sailors at their work,
  And toiled with jovial din;
He helped them hoist and reef the sails,
He helped them stow the casks and bales,
  And heave the anchor in.

But woe unto the lazy louts,
  The idlers of the crew;
Them to torment was his delight,
And worry them by day and night,
  And pinch them black and blue.

And woe to him whose mortal eyes
  Klaboterman behold. 
It is a certain sign of death!—­
The cabin-boy here held his breath,
  He felt his blood run cold.