The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume Vii Part 73

'Tis here, 'tis here! the quivering light Rests on each head; what floods of ecstasy Throng in our veins with wondrous might!

The future dawns; the flood-gates open free; Resistless pours the mighty Word; Now as a herald's call, now whisperingly, Its tone is heard.

Oh Light, oh Comforter, but there Alas! and but to them art Thou revealed And not to us, not everywhere Where drooping souls for comfort have appealed!

I yearn for day that never breaks; Oh shine, before this eye is wholly sealed, Which weeps and wakes.

THE HOUSE IN THE HEATH[35] (1841)

Beneath yon fir trees in the west, The sunset round it glowing, A cottage lies like bird on nest, With thatch roof hardly showing.

And there across the window-sill Leans out a white-starred heifer; She snorts and stamps; then breathes her fill Of evening's balmy zephyr.

Near-by reposes, hedged with thorn, A garden neatly tended; The sunflower looks about with scorn; The bell-flower's head is bended.

And in the garden kneels a child, She weeds or merely dallies, A lily plucks with gesture mild And wanders down the alleys.

A shepherd group in distance dim Lie stretched upon the heather, And with a simple evening hymn Wake the still breeze together.

And from the roomy threshing hall The hammer strokes ring cheery, The plane gives forth a crunching drawl, The rasping saw sounds weary.

The evening star now greets the scene And smoothly soars above it, And o'er the cottage stands serene; He seems in truth to love it.

A vision with such beauty crowned, Had pious monks observed it, They straight upon a golden ground Had painted and preserved it.

The carpenter, the herdsmen there A pious choral sounding; The maiden with the lily fair, And peace the whole surrounding;

The wondrous star that beams on all From out the fields of heaven-- May it not be that in the stall The Christ is born this even?

[Ill.u.s.tration: HANS AM ENDE THE FARM HOUSE]

THE BOY ON THE MOOR[36] (1841)

'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare When the eddies of peat-smoke justle, When the wraiths of mist whirl here and there And wind-blown tendrils tussle, When every step starts a hidden spring And the trodden moss-tufts hiss and sing 'Tis an eerie thing o'er the moor to fare When the tangled reed-beds rustle.

The child with his primer sets out alone And speeds as if he were hunted, The wind goes by with a hollow moan-- There's a noise in the hedge-row stunted.

'Tis the turf-digger's ghost, near-by he dwells, And for drink his master's turf he sells.

"Whoo! whoo!" comes a sound like a stray cow's groan; The poor boy's courage is daunted.

Then stumps loom up beside the ditch, Uncannily nod the bushes, The boy running on, each nerve a twitch, Through a jungle of spear-gra.s.s pushes.

And where it trickles and crackles apace Is the Spinner's unholy hiding-place, The home of the cursed Spinning-witch Who turns her wheel 'mid the rushes.

On, ever on, goes the fearsome rout, In pursuit through that region fenny, At each wild stride the bubbles burst out, And the sounds from beneath are many.

Until at length from the midst of the din Comes the squeak of a spectral violin, That must be the rascally fiddler lout Who ran off with the bridal penny!

The turf splits open, and from the hole Bursts forth an unhappy sighing, "Alas, alas, for my wretched soul!"

'Tis poor d.a.m.ned Margaret crying!

The lad he leaps like a wounded deer, And were not his guardian angel near Some digger might find in a marshy knoll Where his little bleached bones were lying.

But the ground grows firmer beneath his feet, And there from over the meadow A lamp is flickering homely-sweet; The boy at the edge of the shadow Looks back as he pauses to take his breath, And in his glance is the fear of death.

'Twas eerie there 'mid the sedge and peat, Ah, that was a place to dread, O!

ON THE TOWER[37] (1842)

I stand aloft on the balcony, The starlings around me crying, And let like maenad my hair stream free To the storm o'er the ramparts flying.

Oh headlong wind, on this narrow ledge I would I could try thy muscle And, breast to breast, two steps from the edge, Fight it out in a deadly tussle.

Beneath me I see, like hounds at play, How billow on billow dashes; Yea, tossing aloft the glittering spray, The fierce throng hisses and clashes.

Oh, might I leap into the raging flood And urge on the pack to harry

The hidden glades of the coral wood, For the walrus, a worthy quarry!

From yonder mast a flag streams out As bold as a royal pennant; I can watch the good ship lunge about From this tower of which I am tenant; But oh, might I be in the battling ship, Might I seize the rudder and steer her, How gay o'er the foaming reef we'd slip Like the sea-gulls circling near her!

Were I a hunter wandering free, Or a soldier in some sort of fashion, Or if I at least a man might be, The heav'ns would grant me my pa.s.sion.

But now I must sit as fine and still As a child in its best of dresses, And only in secret may have my will And give to the wind my tresses.

THE DESOLATE HOUSE[38] (1842)

Deep in a dell a woodsman's house Has sunk in wild dilapidation; There buried under vines and boughs I often sit in contemplation.

So dense the tangle that the day Through heavy lashes can but glimmer; The rocky cleft is rendered dimmer By overshadowing tree-trunks gray.

Within that dell I love to hear The flies with their tumultuous humming, And solitary beetles near Amid the bushes softly drumming.

And when the trickling cliffs of slate The color from the sunset borrow, Methinks an eye all red with sorrow Looks down on me disconsolate.

The arbor peak with jagged edge Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre And from the moss beneath the hedge Creep forth carnations, nowise eager.

There from the moist cliff overhead The muddy drippings oft bedew them, Then creep in lazy streamlets through them To sink within a fennel-bed.

Along the roof o'ergrown with moss Has many a tuft of thatch projected, A spider-web is built across The window-jamb, else unprotected; The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly Hangs in it like some petal tender, The body armed in golden splendor Lies headless on the sill near-by.

A b.u.t.terfly sometimes may chance In heedless play to flutter hither And stop in momentary trance Where the narcissus blossoms wither; A dove that through the grove has flown Above this dell no more will utter Her coo, one can but hear her flutter And see her shadow on the stone.

And in the fireplace where the snow Each winter down the chimney dashes A ma.s.s of bell-capped toad-stools grow On viscid heaps of moldering ashes.

High on a peg above the rest A hank of rope-yarn limply dangles Like rotted hair, and in the tangles The swallow built her last year's nest.

An old dog-collar set with bells Swings from a hook by clasp and tether, With rude embroidery that spells "Diana" worked upon the leather.

A flute too, when the woodsman died, The men who dug his grave forgot here; The dog, his only friend, they shot here And laid her by her master's side.

But while I sit in reverie, A field-mouse near me shrilly crying, The squirrel barking from his tree, And from the marsh the frogs replying-- Then eerie shudders o'er me shoot, As if I caught from out the dingle Diana's bells once more a-jingle And echoes of the dead man's flute.