What is this I read in history,Full of marvel, full of mystery,Difficult to understand?Is it fiction, is it truth?Children in the flower of youth,Heart in heart, and hand in hand,Ignorant of what helps or harms,Without armor, without arms,Journeying to the Holy Land! Who shall answer or divine?Never since the world was madeSuch a wonderful crusadeStarted forth for Palestine.Never while the world shall lastWill it reproduce the past;Never will it see againSuch an army, such a band,Over mountain, over main,Journeying to the Holy Land. Like a shower of blossoms blownFrom the parent trees were they;Like a flock of birds that flyThrough the unfrequented sky,Holding nothing as their own,Passed they into lands unknown,Passed to suffer and to die. O the simple, child-like trust!O the faith that could believeWhat the harnessed, iron-mailedKnights of Christendom had failed,By their prowess, to achieve,They, the children, could and must! Little thought the Hermit, preachingHoly Wars to knight and baron,That the words dropped in his teaching,His entreaty, his beseeching,Would by children’s hands be gleaned,And the staff on which he leanedBlossom like the rod of Aaron. As a summer wind upheavesThe innumerable leavesIn the bosom of a wood,—Not as separate leaves, but massedAll together by the blast,—So for evil or for goodHis resistless breath upheavedAll at once the many-leaved,Many-thoughted multitude. In the tumult of the airRock the boughs with all the nestsCradled on their tossing crests;By the fervor of his prayerTroubled hearts were everywhereRocked and tossed in human breasts. For a century, at least,His prophetic voice had ceased;But the air was heated stillBy his lurid words and will,As from fires in far-off woods,In the autumn of the year,An unwonted fever broodsIn the sultry atmosphere. II In Cologne the bells were ringing,In Cologne the nuns were singingHymns and canticles divine;Loud the monks sang in their stalls,And the thronging streets were loudWith the voices of the crowd;–Underneath the city wallsSilent flowed the river Rhine. From the gates, that summer day,Clad in robes of hodden gray,With the red cross on the breast,Azure-eyed and golden-haired,Forth the young crusaders fared;While above the band devotedConsecrated banners floated,Fluttered many a flag and streamer,And the cross o’er all the rest!Singing lowly, meekly, slowly,“Give us, give us back the holySepulchre of the Redeemer!”On the vast procession pressed,Youths and maidens. . . . III Ah! what master hand shall paintHow they journeyed on their way,How the days grew long and dreary,How their little feet grew weary,How their little hearts grew faint! Ever swifter day by dayFlowed the homeward river; everMore and more its whitening currentBroke and scattered into spray,Till the calmly-flowing riverChanged into a mountain torrent,Rushing from its glacier greenDown through chasm and black ravine. Like a phoenix in its nest,Burned the red sun in the West,Sinking in an ashen cloud;In the East, above the crestOf the sea-like mountain chain,Like a phoenix from its shroud,Came the red sun back again. Now around them, white with snow,Closed the mountain peaks. Below,Headlong from the precipiceDown into the dark abyss,Plunged the cataract, white with foam;And it said, or seemed to say:“Oh return, while yet you may,Foolish children, to your home,There the Holy City is!” But the dauntless leader said:“Faint not, though your bleeding feetO’er these slippery paths of sleetMove but painfully and slowly;Other feet than yours have bled;Other tears than yours been shedCourage! lose not heart or hope;On the mountains’ southern slopeLies Jerusalem the Holy!” As a white rose in its pride,By the wind in summer-tideTossed and loosened from the branch,Showers its petals o’er the ground,From the distant mountain’s side,Scattering all its snows around,With mysterious, muffled sound,Loosened, fell the avalanche.Voices, echoes far and near,Roar of winds and waters blending,Mists uprising, clouds impending,Filled them with a sense of fear,Formless, nameless, never ending.