Читать книгу The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 12, No. 325, August 2, 1828 - Various - Страница 4

The bishop of Mentz was a wealthy prince,

Wealthy and proud was he;

He had all that was worth a wish on earth—

But he had not charitie!

He would stretch put his empty hands to bless,

Or lift them both to pray;

But alack! to lighten man's distress,

They moved no other way.

A famine came! but his heart was still

As hard as his pride was high;

And the starving poor but throng'd his door

To curse him and to die.

At length from the crowd rose a clamour so loud,

That a cruel plot laid he;

He open'd one of his granaries wide,

And bade them enter free.

In they rush'd—the maid and the sire.

And the child that could barely run—

Then he clos'd the barn, and set it on fire.

And burnt them every one!

And loud he laugh'd at each terrible shriek,

And cried to his archer-train,

"The merry mice!—how shrill they squeak!—

They are fond of the bishop's grain!"

But mark, what an awful judgment soon,

On the cruel bishop fell;

With so many mice his palace swarm'd,

That in it he could not dwell.

They gnaw'd the arras above and beneath,

They eat each savoury dish up;

And shortly their sacrilegious teeth

Began to nibble the bishop!

He flew to his castle of Ehrenfels,

By the side of the Rhine so fair;

But they found the road to his new abode,

And came in legions there.

He built him, in haste, a tower tall

In the tide, for his better assurance;

But they swam the river, and scal'd the wall,

And worried him past endurance.

One morning his skeleton there was seen,

By a load of flesh the lighter;

They had picked his bones uncommonly clean,

And eaten his very mitre!

Such was the end of the bishop of Mentz,

And oft at the midnight hour,

He comes in the shape of a fog so dense,

And sits on his old "Mouse-Tower."