Коллектив авторов - The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06

Thou excellent Town-Cellar Master of Bremen!
Dost see on the housetops the little angels
Sitting aloft, all tipsy and singing?
The burning sun up yonder
Is but a fiery and drunken nose—
The Universe Spirit's red nose;
And round the Universe Spirit's red nose
Reels the whole drunken world.

Soft and gently through my soul
Sweetest bells are ringing,
Speed you forth, my little song,
Of springtime blithely singing!

Speed you onward to a house
Where sweet flowers are fleeting!
If, perchance, a rose you see,
Say, I send her greeting!

Thy deep blue eyes enchant me,
So lovingly they glow;
My gazing soul grows dreamy,
My words come strange and slow.

Thy deep blue eyes enchant me
Wherever I may go:
An ocean of azure fancies
O'erwhelms me with its flow.

Was once an ancient monarch,
Heavy his heart, his locks were gray,
This poor and aged monarch
Took a wife so young and gay.

Was once a page-boy handsome,
With lightsome heart and curly hair,
The silken train he carried
Of the queen so young and fair.

Dost know the old, old story?
It sounds so sweet, so sad to tell—
Both were obliged to perish,
They loved each other too well.

Oh I had once a beauteous Fatherland!
High used to seem
The oak—so high!—the violets nodded kind—
It was a dream.

In German I was kissed, in German told
(You scarce would deem
How sweetly rang the words): "I love thee well!—"
It was a dream.

It is the fairy forest old,
With lime-tree blossoms scented!
The moonshine with its mystic light
My soul and sense enchanted.

On, on I roamed, and, as I went,
Sweet music o'er me rose there;
It is the nightingale—she sings
Of love and lovers' woes there.

She sings of love and lovers' woes,
Hearts blest, and hearts forsaken:
So sad is her mirth, so glad her sob,
Dreams long forgot awaken.

Still on I roamed, and, as I went,
I saw before me lowering
On a great wide lawn a stately pile,
With gables peaked and towering.

Closed were its windows, everywhere
A hush, a gloom, past telling;
It seemed as though silent Death within
These empty halls were dwelling.

A Sphinx lay there before the door,
Half-brutish and half-human,
A lioness in trunk and claws,
In head and breasts a woman.

A lovely woman! The pale cheek
Spoke of desires that wasted;
The hushed lips curved into a smile,
That wooed them to be tasted.

The nightingale so sweetly sang,
I yielded to their wooing;
And as I kissed that winning face,
I sealed my own undoing.

The marble image thrilled with life,
The stone began to quiver;
She drank my kisses' burning flame
With fierce convulsive shiver.

She almost drank my breath away;
And, to her passion bending,
She clasped me close, with her lion claws
My hapless body rending.

Delicious torture, rapturous pang!
The pain, the bliss, unbounded!
Her lips, their kiss was heaven to me,
Her claws, oh, how they wounded.

The nightingale sang: "O beauteous Sphinx!
O love, love! say, why this is,
That with the anguish of death itself
Thou minglest all thy blisses?

"Oh beauteous Sphinx, oh, answer me,
That riddle strange unloosing!
For many, many thousand years
Have I on it been musing!"

Germany's still a little child,
But he's nursed by the sun, though tender;
He is not suckled on soothing milk,
But on flames of burning splendor.

One grows apace on such a diet;
It fires the blood from languor.
Ye neighbors' children, have a care
This urchin how ye anger!

He is an awkward infant giant;
The oak by the roots uptearing,
He'll beat you till your backs are sore,
And crack your crowns for daring.

He is like Siegfried, the noble child,
That song-and-saga wonder;
Who, when his fabled sword was forged,
His anvil cleft in sunder!

To you, who will our Dragon slay,
Shall Siegfried's strength be given.
Hurrah! how joyfully your nurse
Will laugh on you from heaven!

The Dragon's hoard of royal gems
You'll win, with none to share it.
Hurrah! how bright the golden crown
Will sparkle when you wear it!

In Freedom's War, of "Thirty Years" and more,
A lonely outpost have I held—in vain!
With no triumphant hope or prize in store,
Without a thought to see my home again.

I watched both day and night; I could not sleep
Like my well-tented comrades far behind,
Though near enough to let their snoring keep
A friend awake, if e'er to doze inclined.

And thus, when solitude my spirits shook,
Or fear—for all but fools know fear sometimes—
To rouse myself and them, I piped and took
A gay revenge in all my wanton rhymes.

Yes! there I stood, my musket always ready,
And when some sneaking rascal showed his head,
My eye was vigilant, my aim was steady,
And gave his brains an extra dose of lead.

But war and justice have far different laws,
And worthless acts are often done right well;
The rascals' shots were better than their cause,
And I was hit—and hit again, and fell!

That outpost is abandoned; while the one
Lies in the dust, the rest in troops depart;
Unconquered—I have done what could be done,
With sword unbroken, and with broken heart.

Deeply the Abbot of Waltham sighed
When he heard the news of woe:
How King Harold had come to a pitiful end,
And on Hastings field lay low.