I listened with breathless eagerness,
Hoarding each word like a miser,
When she told me the strange, mysterious tale
Of Barbarossa, the Kaiser.

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She assured me he was not really dead,
Though learned folk might say so;
With his knights in a mountain he slumbered, hid,
And had dwelt for many a day so.

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Kyffhäuser, she said, was the mountain's name
That he dreed his royal doom in.
'Tis a cave with vaulted chambers high
Which ghostly lamps illumine.

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The first of the rooms is a stable vast,
Where, dight in harness splendid,
Thousands and thousands of horses stand
Above the mangers bended.

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They are saddled and bridled, one and all,
But never a neigh gives token
Of life, they stand like statues of iron
In a silence for ever unbroken.

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In the second hall the soldiers sleep, ,
Stretched out in their straw-strewn places:
Thousands of soldiers, bearded and rough,
With bold and warlike faces.

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And each is armed from top to toe,
But never a one of the number
Is seen to toss or stir at all;
They lie in dreamless slumber.

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In the third room axes and spears and swords
Are piled in mounting stages,
With helmets and harness, and firearms used
By the Franks of the Middle Ages.

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The cannons, though not very numerous, serve
To commemorate fields well holden;
From the top of the pile a standard flaunts
The colours, black-red-golden.

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In the fourth hall dwells the Kaiser himself,
On a chair of stone he is seated;
By a table of stone, his head on his hand,
He has sat while the ages fleeted.

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His beard is as red as a fiery flame,
That beard which grew so bravely
That it touched the ground; and now he will move
An eyelid, and now frown gravely.

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