THE LEGEND OF THE DRACHENFELS;

OR, HOW THE FELL DRAGON FELL.

ABOVE that drunken babbling brook

Where soaked the Naiad queen,

There lived a dragon in a nook

Quite horrid to be seen:

When he no priest for dinner had,

He fain a maid would eat;

(Such brutes seem, in the abstract, bad,

And worse when we conn Crete.)

Now, two young chieftains thereabout

Had chanced in war to win;

(Like "t' other one," they quite came out,

When, victors, they came in.)

They madly loved a captive maid

In near a dying state;

This girl, although her form was good,

Recovered very late.

They fought; the marriage of the first

The second would oppose;

Then one began to blow, and cursed,

While t' other came to blows;

Meanwhile, the maiden near gave up,

And gained th' immortal crown;

For she was much cut up, because

Her father 'd been cut down.

And so the sages of the prince

Invoked the Goddess Reason,

And thought they would not matters mince,

When not the proper season;

The girl was then so very ill,

It was but half a murder;

They rigged a derrick up the hill, -

Au naturel they served her.

Now, when the dragon saw this belle,

He did n't put the drag on;

But gave one leap, - she could n't yell,

For they had put a gag on;

Her hair was red, but ne'ertheless

Her face was white and mignon;

Sir Dragon was a realist, -

He gorged upon her chignon.

He sprang again upon his prey,

Mon dieu! quelle decheance!

He, found, his appetite to stay,

No piece de resistance;

Duplex elliptics caught his wing,

He stumbled off the wall,

And thus, of his content the Spring,

Was changed unto a Fall.

And now, her skirts and fortune good

She thanked with much affection;

For that she was not dragon's food

Was food for much reflection.

She then unto the altar went,

And hurried thence to dinner;

And, since her mind was altered, bent,

And wed one knightly sinner.

He died that night, but ne'ertheless

The maiden lived in clover,

And her descendants numberless

Adorned the Rhine all over.

They stretched a chain - 't was not too thin -

And various ropes of flax;

And on the vessels that came in

They laid an income-tax.