I

The wind comes down the chimney with a sigh,

The kettle sings, chain-swung from grimy hook,

While ticks the clock unseen on mantel high.

The black cat holds the cosiest chimney-nook,

Straight in the blaze his gold-stone eyeballs look,

And children four do pay him flattering court.

The baby brings to him its picture-book,

And shows the way to build a castled fort.

The black cat shares, indeed, their every thought and sport.

II

The black cat came to us a twelvemonth since;

The black cat is a stranger with us yet;

We treat him well; we call him our Black Prince.

So thick and glossy is his coat of jet

You well might say that you have never met

A cat so lordly, though he seems to brood

Over some wrong he never can forget.

We know that he could tell us, if he would—

Our dear Black Prince, so sad, so gentle, and so good!

III

“You prattle, children. Fritz, bestir yourself!

The fire needs wood, so hungry is the wind;

And Elsa, bring the platters from the shelf

And lay the table. You, too, Gretchen, mind,

For you of late are carelessly inclined,

And brittle is the blaue glocken ware.

Make haste, else will your father come and find,

For all his day’s hard work, but churlish fare.

Full sure I am no man works harder anywhere.”

IV

The good house-mother speaks, and not in vain,

For promptly all her willing brood obey.

They hear the dead leaves click against the pane,

Updriven by the wind in its mad play.

“One might be thankful that one need not stray

On such a night as this—’tis just the night

When the Wild Huntsman (as the people say),

With all his hounds is scouring heaven’s height,

And you may see him if, as now, the moon be bright.”

V

“It is an old and foolish tale. Be still,

For now, I think, your father’s step I hear,

Though not the tune he whistles down the hill.

He comes—is at the door. Why, goodman, dear,

You’re out of breath! Bad news you bring, I fear.”

“Bad news” (the goodman smiles, with half a frown),

“But not for us; and so take heart of cheer.

I own I’m out of breath—but sit ye down

And hear the strangest thing e’er happened in this town.”

VI

The children gather at their father’s knees

And, wonder-eyed, the coming story wait—

The story strange, the story sure to please.

The black cat, who absorbed their cares but late,

Is left to hold his solitary state.

“’Twas thus,” the father said, “as I came home,

I reached the ruined castle’s postern gate

Just at the time the bats begin to roam

And dart with heedless wings about the ivied gloam;

VII

“When, on my left, along the crumbling wall,

Sharp-graved against the pallid afterglow,

I saw a funeral train, with sweeping pall,

And mournful bearers in a double row.

VIII

“Folk say the Schloss was ever haunted ground;

But tell us, father, what those mourners were.”

The father answered, smiling as he frowned:

“Now, if ’twere told by some strange traveller,

I’d say, ‘Too much you tax our faith, good sir.’

But truth was ever priceless unto me.

Those mourners, clad in somber coats of fur,

Were cats—no more, nor less! This I did see,

And that the dead grimalkin was of high degree.”

IX

Up, up the chimney go the sparks apace;

Up, up, to vanish in the gusty sky.

The black cat—look! he leaves his wonted place,

And hark! he speaks: “Then, king of cats am I!“

And with this first and last word for good-by,

Up, up the chimney he hath vanished quite.

“Our dear, our good Black Prince!” the children cry;

“We always thought he should be king by right,

But we shall miss him sadly, both by day and night.”