The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 07

God bless you, wife and child, and sire!
Bless all your fields with rich increase,
And crown each faithful heart's desire!

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THE LION'S RIDE [41 - Translator: J.C. Mangan. Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig.] (1834)

King of deserts reigns the lion; will he through his realm go riding,
Down to the lagoon he paces, in the tall sedge there lies hiding.
Where gazelles and camelopards drink, he crouches by the shore;
Ominous, above the monster, moans the quivering sycamore.

When, at dusk, the ruddy hearth-fires in the Hottentot kraals are
glowing,
And the motley, changeful signals on the Table Mountain growing
Dim and distant—when the Caffre sweeps along the lone karroo—
When in the bush the antelope slumbers, and beside the stream the gnu—

Lo! majestically stalking, yonder comes the tall giraffe,
Hot with thirst, the gloomy waters of the dull lagoon to quaff;
O'er the naked waste behold her, with parched tongue, all panting
hasten—
Now she sucks the cool draught, kneeling, from the stagnant, slimy basin.

Hark, a rustling in the sedges! with a roar, the lion springs
On her back now. What a race-horse! Say, in proudest stalls of kings,
Saw one ever richer housings than the courser's motley hide,
On whose back the tawny monarch of the beasts tonight will ride?

Fixed his teeth are in the muscles of the nape, with greedy strain;
Round the giant courser's withers waves the rider's yellow mane.
With a hollow cry of anguish, leaps and flies the tortured steed;
See her, how with skin of leopard she combines the camel's speed!

See, with lightly beating footsteps, how she scours the moonlit plains!
From their sockets start the eyeballs; from the torn and bleeding veins,
Fast the thick, black drops come trickling, o'er the brown and dappled
neck,
And the flying beast's heart-beatings audible the stillness make.

Like the cloud, that, guiding Israel through the land of Yemen, shone,
Like a spirit of the desert, like a phantom, pale and wan,
O'er the desert's sandy ocean, like a waterspout at sea,
Whirls a yellow, cloudy column, tracking them where'er they flee.

On their track the vulture follows, flapping, croaking, through the air,
And the terrible hyena, plunderer of tombs, is there;
Follows them the stealthy panther—Cape-town's folds have known him well;
Them their monarch's dreadful pathway, blood and sweat full plainly tell.

On his living throne, they, quaking, see their ruler sitting there,
With sharp claw the painted cushion of his seat they see him tear.
Restless the giraffe must bear him on, till strength and life-blood fail
her;
Mastered by such daring rider, rearing, plunging, naught avail her.

To the desert's verge she staggers—sinks—one groan—and all is o'er.
Now the steed shall feast the rider, dead, and smeared with dust and
gore.
Far across, o'er Madagascar, faintly now the morning breaks;
Thus the king of beasts his journey nightly through his empire makes.

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THE SPECTRE-CARAVAN[42 - Translator: Charles Wharton Stork.] (1835)

'Twas at midnight, in the Desert, where we rested on the ground;
There my Bedouins were sleeping, and their steeds were stretched around;
In the farness lay the moonlight on the mountains of the Nile,
And the camel-bones that strewed the sands for many an arid mile.

With my saddle for a pillow did I prop my weary head,
And my caftan-cloth unfolded o'er my limbs was lightly spread,
While beside me, both as Captain and as watchman of my band,
Lay my Bazra sword and pistols twain a-shimmering on the sand.

And the stillness was unbroken, save at moments by a cry
From some stray belated vulture sailing blackly down the sky,
Or the snortings of a sleeping steed at waters fancy-seen,
Or the hurried warlike mutterings of some dreaming Bedouin.

When, behold!—a sudden sandquake—and atween the earth and moon
Rose a mighty Host of Shadows, as from out some dim lagoon;
Then our coursers gasped with terror, and a thrill shook every man,
And the cry was "Allah Akbar!—'tis the Spectre-Caravan!"

On they came, their hueless faces toward Mecca evermore;
On they came, long files of camels, and of women whom they bore;
Guides and merchants, youthful maidens, bearing pitchers like Rebecca,
And behind them troops of horsemen, dashing, hurrying on to Mecca!

More and more! the phantom-pageant overshadowed all the Plains,
Yea, the ghastly camel-bones arose, and grew to camel-trains;
And the whirling column-clouds of sand to forms in dusky garbs,
Here, afoot as Hadjee pilgrims—there, as warriors on their barbs!

Whence we knew the Night was come when all whom Death had sought and
found,
Long ago amid the sands whereon their bones yet bleach around,