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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03

Год написания книги
2018
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The hyena-shapes (that women were!)
Jest with the horrors they survey;
They hound—they rend—they mangle there,
As panthers with their prey!
Naught rests to hallow—burst the ties
Of life's sublime and reverent awe;
Before the Vice the Virtue flies,
And Universal Crime is Law!
Man fears the lion's kingly tread;
Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror;
And still, the dreadliest of the dread,
Is Man himself in error!
No torch, though lit from Heaven, illumes
The Blind!—Why place it in his hands?
It lights not him—it but consumes
The City and the Land!

IX

Rejoice and laud the prospering skies!
The kernel bursts its husks—behold
From the dull clay the metal rise,
Pure-shining, as a star of gold!
Neck and lip, but as one beam,
It laughs like a sunbeam.
And even the scutcheon, clear-graven, shall tell
That the art of a master has fashioned the Bell!
Come in—come in,
My merry men—we'll form a ring
The new-born labor christening;
And "CONCORD" we will name her!
To union may her heart-felt call
In brother-love attune us all!
May she the destined glory win
For which the master sought to frame her—
Aloft—(all earth's existence under)
In blue-pavilioned heaven afar
To dwell—the Neighbor of the Thunder,
The borderer of the Star!
Be hers above a voice to raise
Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere,
Who, while they move, their Maker praise,
And lead around the wreathèd year!
To solemn and eternal things
We dedicate her lips sublime,
As hourly, calmly, on she swings,
Fanned by the fleeting wings of Time!
No pulse—no heart—no feeling hers!
She lends the warning voice to Fate;
And still companions, while she stirs,
The changes of the Human State!
So may she teach us, as her tone
But now so mighty, melts away—
That earth no life which earth has known
From the last silence can delay!
Slowly now the cords upheave her!
From her earth-grave soars the Bell;
'Mid the airs of Heaven we leave her!
In the Music-Realm to dwell!
Up—upwards—yet raise—
She has risen—she sways.
Fair Bell to our city bode joy and increase,
And oh, may thy first sound be hallowed to—PEACE.[15]

* * * * *

THE GERMAN ART (1800)

By no kind Augustus reared,
To no Medici endeared,
German Art arose;
Fostering glory smil'd not on her,
Ne'er with kingly smiles to sun her,
Did her blooms unclose.
No! She went, by Monarchs slighted
Went unhonored, unrequited,
From high Frederick's throne;
Praise and Pride be all the greater,
That Man's genius did create her,
From Man's worth alone.
Therefore, all from loftier mountains,
Purer wells and richer Fountains,
Streams our Poet-Art;
So no rule to curb its rushing—
All the fuller flows it gushing
From its deep—The Heart!

* * * * *

COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEW CENTURY (1801)

Where can Peace find a refuge? Whither, say,
Can Freedom turn? Lo, friend, before our view
The CENTURY rends itself in storm away,
And, red with slaughter, dawns on earth the New!
The girdle of the lands is loosen'd[16]—hurl'd
To dust the forms old Custom deem'd divine,—
Safe from War's fury not the watery world;—
Safe not the Nile-God nor the antique Rhine.
Two mighty nations make the world their field,
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