Classic Poem

PARTI .

Roprecht the Robber is taken at last;
In Cologne they have him fast;
Trial is over, and sentence past;
And hopes of escape were vain, he knew,
For the gallows now must have its due.

But though pardon cannot here be bought,
It may for the other world, he thought;
And so, to his comfort, with one consent
The Friars assured their penitent.

Money, they teach him, when rightly given,
Is put out to account with Heaven;
For suffrages therefore his plunder went,
Sinfully gotten, but piously spent.

All Saints, whose shrines are in that city,
They tell him, will on him have pit,
Seeing he hath liberally paid,
In this time of need, for their good aid.

In the Three Kings they bid him confide,
Who there in Cologne lie side by side:
And from the Eleven Thousand Virgins eke,
Intercession for him will they bespeak.

And also a sharer he shall be
In the merits of their community;
All which they promise, he need not fear,
Through Purgatory will carry him clear.

Though the furnace of Babylon could not compare
With the terrible fire that rages there,
Yet they their part will so zealously do,
He shall only but frizzle as he flies through.

And they will help him to die well,
And he shall be hang'd with book and bell;
And moreover with holy water they
Will sprinkle him, ere they turn away.

For buried Roprecht must not be;
He is to be left on the triple tree;
That they who pass along may spy
Where the famous Robber is hanging on high.

Seen is that gibbet far and wide
From the Rhine and from the Dusseldorff side;
And from all roads which cross the sand,
North, south, and west, in that level land.

It will be a comfortable sight
To see him there by day and by night;
For Roprecht the Robber many a year
Had kept the country round in fear.

So the Friars assisted, by special grace,
With book and bell to the fatal place;
And he was hang'd on the triple tree,
With as much honor as man could be.

In his suit of irons he was hung;
They sprinkled him then, and their psalm they sung;
And turning away when this duty was paid,
They said, What a goodly end he had made!

The crowd broke up, and went their way;
All were gone by the close of day;
And Roprecht the Robber was left there
Hanging alone in the moonlight air.

The last who look'd back for a parting sight,
Beheld him there in the clear moonlight;
But the first who look'd when the morning shone;
Saw in dismay that Roprecht was gone.