Poetry Archives

Stibor had led in many a fight,
  And broken a score of swords
In furious frays and bloody raids
  Against the Turkish hordes.

And Sigismund, the Polish king,
  Who joined the Magyar bands,
Bestowed upon the valiant knight
  A broad estate of lands.

Once when the wars were o’er, the knight
  Was holding wassail high,
And the valiant men that followed him
  Were at the revelry.

Betzko, his Jester, pleased him so
  He vowed it his the task
To do whatever in human power
  His witty Fool might ask.

“Build on yon cliff,” the Jester cried,
  In drunken jollity,
“A mighty castle high and wide,
  And name it after me.”

“Ah, verily a Jester’s prayer,”
  Exclaimed the knightly crew,
“To ask of such a noble lord
  What you know he cannot do.”

“Who says I cannot,” Stibor cried,
  “Do whatsoe’er I will?
Within one year a castle shall stand
  On yonder rocky hill—

“A castle built of ponderous stones,
  To give me future fame;
In honor of my witty Fool,
  Betzko shall be its name.”

Now the cliff was high three hundred feet,
  And perpendicular;
And the skill that could build a castle there
  Must come from lands afar.

And craftsmen came from foreign lands,
  Italian, German and Jew—
Apprentices and fellow-craftsmen,
  And master-masons, too.

And every traveler journeying
  Along the mountain-ways
Was held to pay his toll of toil
  On the castle for seven days.

Slowly they raised the massive towers
  Upon the steep ascent,
And all around a thousand hands
  Built up the battlement.

Three hundred feet above the glen—
  (By the steps five hundred feet)—
The castle stood upon the cliff
  At the end of the year—complete.

Now throughout all the Magyar land
  There’s none other half so high,
So massive built, so strong and grand;—
  It reaches the very sky.

But from that same high battlement
  (Say tales by gypsies told)
The valiant Stibor met his death
  When he was cross and old.

I’ll tell you the tale as they told it to me,
  And I doubt not it is true,
For ’twas handed down from the middle ages
  From the lips of knights who knew.

One day when the knight was old and cross,
  And a little the worse for grog,
Betzko, the Jester, thoughtlessly
  Struck Stibor’s favorite dog.

Now the dog was a hound and Stibor’s pet,
  And as white as Carpathian snow,
And Stibor hurled old Betzko down
  From the walls to the rocks below.

And as the Jester headlong fell
  From the dizzy, dreadful height,
He muttered a curse with his latest breath
  On the head of the cruel knight.

One year from that day old Stibor held
  His drunken wassail long,
And spent the hours till the cock crew morn
  In jest and wine and song.

Then he sought his garden on the cliff,
  And lay down under a vine
To sleep away the lethargy
  Of a wassail-bowl of wine.

While sleeping soundly under the shade,
  And dreaming of revelries,
An adder crawled upon his breast,
  And bit him in both his eyes.

Blinded and mad with pain he ran
  Toward the precipice,
Unheeding till he headlong fell
  Adown the dread abyss.

Just where old Betzko’s blood had dyed
  With red the old rocks gray,
Quivering and bleeding and dumb and dead
  Old Stibor’s body lay.