The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume V Part 47

_AUGUST VON PLATEN-HALLERMUND_

THE PILGRIM BEFORE ST. JUST'S[60] (1819)

'Tis night, and tempests whistle o'er the moor; Oh, Spanish father, ope the door!

Deny me not the little boon I crave, Thine order's vesture, and a grave!

Grant me a cell within thy convent-shrine-- Half of this world, and more, was mine; The head that to the tonsure now stoops down Was circled once by many a crown; The shoulders fretted now with shirt of hair Did once the imperial ermine wear.

Now am I as the dead, e'er death is come, And sink in ruins like old Rome.

THE GRAVE OF ALARIC[61] (1820)

On Busento's gra.s.sy banks a m.u.f.fled chorus echoes nightly, While the swirling eddies answer and the wavelets ripple lightly.

Up and down the river, shades of Gothic warriors watch are keeping, For they mourn their people's hero, Alaric, with sobs of weeping.

All too soon and far from home and kindred here to rest they laid him, While in youthful beauty still his flowing golden curls arrayed him.

And along the river's bank a thousand hands with eager striving Labored long, another channel for Busento's tide contriving.

Then a cavern deep they hollowed in the river-bed depleted, Placed therein the dead king, clad in proof, upon his charger seated.

O'er him and his proud array the earth they filled, and covered loosely, So that on their hero's grave the water-plants would grow profusely.

And again the course they altered of Busento's waters troubled; In its ancient channel rushed the current--foamed, and hissed, and bubbled.

And the Goths in chorus chanted: "Hero, sleep! Tiny fame immortal Roman greed shall ne'er insult, nor break thy tomb's most sacred portal!"

Thus they sang, and paeans sounded high above the fight's commotion; Onward roll, Busento's waves, and bear them to the farthest ocean!

REMORSE[62] (1820)

How I started up in the night, in the night, Drawn on without rest or reprieval!

The streets with their watchmen were lost to my sight, As I wandered so light In the night, in the night, Through the gate with the arch medieval.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MORNING HOUR]

The mill-brook rushed from its rocky height; I leaned o'er the bridge in my yearning; Deep under me watched I the waves in their flight, As they glided so light In the night, in the night, Yet backward not one was returning.

O'erhead were revolving, so countless and bright, The stars in melodious existence; And with them the moon, more serenely bedight; They sparkled so light In the night, in the night, Through the magical, measureless distance.

And upward I gazed in the night, in the night, And again on the waves in their fleeting; Ah woe! thou hast wasted thy days in delight; Now silence, thou light, In the night, in the night, The remorse in thy heart that is beating.

WOULD I WERE FREE AS ARE MY DREAMS[63] (1822)

Would I were free as are my dreams, Sequestered from the garish crowd To glide by banks of quiet streams Cooled by the shadow-drifting cloud!

Free to shake off this weary weight Of human sin, and rest instead On nature's heart inviolate-- All summer singing o'er my head!

There would I never disembark, Nay, only graze the flowery sh.o.r.e To pluck a rose beneath the lark, Then go my liquid way once more,

And watch, far off, the drowsy lines Of herded cattle crop and pa.s.s, The vintagers among the vines, The mowers in the dewy gra.s.s;

And nothing would I drink or eat Save heaven's clear sunlight and the spring Of earth's own welling waters sweet, That never make the pulses sting.

SONNET[64] (1822)

Oh, he whose pain means life, whose life means pain, May feel again what I have felt before; Who has beheld his bliss above him soar And, when he sought it, fly away again; Who in a labyrinth has tried in vain, When he has lost his way, to find a door; Whom love has singled out for nothing more Than with despondency his soul to bane; Who begs each lightning for a deadly stroke, Each stream to drown the heart that cannot heal From all the cruel stabs by which it broke; Who does begrudge the dead their beds like steel Where they are safe from love's beguiling yoke-- He knows me quite, and feels what I must feel.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: From Addresses on Religion (Discourse IV).]

[Footnote 2: This refers to the second book, which takes the form of a dialogue between the inquirer and a Spirit.]

[Footnote 3: An allusion to the second book.]

[Footnote 4: The audience gathered in the building of the Royal Academy at Berlin.--ED.]

[Footnote 5: J.G. Hamann. _h.e.l.lenistische Briefe_ I, 189.]

[Footnote 6: Goethe. _Werke_ (1840) x.x.x., 352. Mr. Ward's translation of Goethe's "Essays on Art," p. 76.]

[Footnote 7: Selections translated by Margarete Munsterberg.]

[Footnote 8: Permission George Bell & Son, London.]