Is it a fiend that to a stake

Of fire his desperate self is tethering?
Or stubborn spirit doomed to yell
In solitary ward or cell,

Ten thousand miles from all his brethren ?

Never did pulse so quickly throb,
And never heart so loudly panted;
He looks, he cannot choose but look;
Like some one reading in a book, -
A book that is enchanted.

Ah, well-a-day for Peter Bell!
He will be turned to iron soon,
Meet Statue for the court of Fear!
His hat is up, and every hair

Bristles, and whitens in the moon!

He looks, he ponders, looks again;
He sees a motion, hears a groan;

He gives a loud and frightful shriek,

And back he falls, as if his life were flown!

PART SECOND.

WE left our Hero in a trance,
Beneath the alders, near the river;

The Ass is by the river-side,

And, where the feeble breezes glide,
Upon the stream the moonbeams quiver.

A happy respite! but at length
He feels the glimmering of the moon ;
Wakes with glazed eye, and feebly sighing, —
To sink, perhaps, where he is lying,
Into a second swoon!

He lifts his head, he sees his staff;
He touches, - 't is to him a treasure!
Faint recollection seems to tell

That he is yet where mortals dwell,
A thought received with languid pleasure!

His head upon his elbow propped,
Becoming less and less perplexed,
Sky-ward he looks, to rock and wood,

And then

upon the glassy flood

His wandering eye is fixed.

Thought he, that is the face of one
In his last sleep securely bound!

So toward the stream his head he bent,
And downward thrust his staff, intent.
The river's depth to sound.

Now, like a tempest-shattered bark,
That overwhelmed and prostrate lies,

And in a moment to the verge
Is lifted of a foaming surge,
Full suddenly the Ass doth rise:

His staring bones all shake with joy,
And close by Peter's side he stands :
While Peter o'er the river bends,
The little Ass his neck extends,
And fondly licks his hands.

Such life is in the Ass's eyes,
Such life is in his limbs and ears;

That Peter Bell, if he had been
The veriest coward ever seen,

Must now have thrown aside his fears.

The Ass looks on,—and to his work
Is Peter quietly resigned;

He touches here, he touches there,

And now among the dead man's hair
His sapling Peter has entwined.

He pulls and looks

and pulls again;

And he whom the poor Ass had lost, The man who had been four days dead, Head-foremost from the river's bed Uprises like a ghost!

And Peter draws him to dry land;
And through the brain of Peter pass

Some poignant twitches, fast and faster; "No doubt," quoth he, "he is the Master Of this poor miserable Ass!"

The meagre shadow that looks on,
What would he now? what is he doing?
His sudden fit of joy is flown,-

He on his knees hath laid him down,
As if he were his grief renewing:

But no,

- that Peter on his back

Must mount, he shows well as he can:
Thought Peter then, come weal or woe,
I'll do what he would have me do,
In pity to this poor drowned man.

With that resolve he boldly mounts
Upon the pleased and thankful Ass;
And then, without a moment's stay,
That earnest Creature turned away,
Leaving the body on the grass.

Intent upon his faithful watch,

The Beast four days and nights had past
A sweeter meadow ne'er was seen,
And there the Ass four days had been,
Nor ever once did break his fast:

Yet firm his step, and stout his heart; The mead is crossed, the quarry's mouth

Is reached; but there the trusty guide Into a thicket turns aside,

And deftly ambles towards the south.

When hark a burst of doleful sound!
And Peter honestly might say,

The like came never to his ears,
Though he has been, full thirty years,
A rover, night and day!

"T is not a plover of the moors, "T is not a bittern of the fen;

Nor can it be a barking fox,

Nor night-bird chambered in the rocks, Nor wild-cat in a woody glen!

The Ass is startled, and stops short
Right in the middle of the thicket;
And Peter, wont to whistle loud
Whether alone or in a crowd,

Is silent as a silent cricket.

What ails you now, my little Bess? Well may you tremble and look grave! This cry, that rings along the wood, This cry, that floats adown the flood, Comes from the entrance of a cave:

I see a blooming Wood-boy there,
And if I had the power to say