The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862

there's the geese o' the village!
All are a-comin' to see you, and all want to
give you a welcome;
Yes, and you're kind o' heart, and you
prattle to all of 'em kindly;
"Come, you well-behaved creeturs, eat and
drink what I bring you,—
I must be off and away: God bless you,
well-behaved creeturs!"[1 - As the reader of German may be curious to see a specimen of the original, we give this last passage, which contains, in a brief compass, many distinctive features of the Alemannic dialect:—"Nei so lucg me doch, wie cha mi Meiddeli springe!'Chunnsch mi über,' seits und lacht, 'und wittmi, se hol mi!'All' wil en andere Weg, und alliwil anderiSprüngli!Fall mer nit sel Reiuli ab!—Do hemmer's, i sags io—Hani's denn nit gseit? Doch gauckelet's witersund witers,Groblet uf alle Vieren, und stellt si wieder ufd' Beinli,Schlieft in d' Hürst—iez such mer's eisl—dörtgüggelet's use,Wart, i chumm! Druf rüefts mer wieder hinterde Bäume:'Roth wo bin i iez!'—und het si urige Phatest.Aber wie de gosch, wirsch sichtli grösser undschöner.Wo di liebligen Othern weiht, so färbt si der RaseGrüener rechts und links, es stöhn in saftigeTriebeGras und Chrüter uf, es stöhn in frischere GstalteFarbigi Blüemli do, und d' Immli chömmen undsuge.'S Wasserstelzli chunnt, und lueg doch,'s Wulivo Todtnau!Alles will di bschauen, und Alles will di bigrüsse,Und di fründlig Herz git alle fründligi Rede:'Chömmet ihr ordlige Thierli, do hender, essetund trinket!Witers goht mi Weg, Gsegott, ihr ordlige Thierli!'"]

The poet follows the stream through her whole course, never dropping the figure, which is adapted, with infinite adroitness, and with the play of a fancy as wayward and unrestrained as her own waters, to all her changing aspects. Beside the Catholic chapel of Fair-Beeches she pauses to listen to the mass; but farther down the valley becomes an apostate, and attends the Lutheran service in the Husemer church. Stronger and statelier grown, she trips along with the step of a maiden conscious of her own beauty, and the poet clothes her in the costume of an Alemannic bride, with a green kirtle of a hundred folds, and a stomacher of Milan gauze, "like a loose cloud on a morning sky in spring-time." Thus equipped, she wanders at will over the broader meadows, around the feet of vineyard-hills, visits villages and churches, or stops to gossip with the lusty young millers. But the woman's destiny is before her; she cannot escape it; and the time is drawing near when her wild, singing, pastoral being shall be absorbed in that of the strong male stream, the bright-eyed son of the Alps, who has come so far to woo and win her.

Daughter o' Feldberg, half-and-half I've got
a suspicion
How as you've virtues and faults enough now
to choose ye a husband.
Castin' y'r eyes down, are you? Pickin' and
plattin' y'r ribbons?
Don't be so foolish, wench!—She thinks I
know nothin' about it,
How she's already engaged, and each is
a-waitin' for t'other.
Don't I know him, my darlin', the lusty
young fellow, y'r sweetheart?

Over powerful rocks, and through the hedges
and thickets,
Right away from the snowy Swiss mountains
he plunges at Rheineck
Down to the lake, and straight ahead swims
through it to Constance,
Sayin': "'T's no use o' talkin', I'll have
the gal I'm engaged to!"

But, as he reaches Stein, he goes a little more slowly,
Leavin' the lake where he's decently washed his feet and his body.
Diessenhofen don't please him,—no, nor the convent beside it.
For'ard he goes to Schaffhausen, onto the rocks at the corner;
There he says: "It's no use o' talkin', I'll git to my sweetheart:
Body and life I'll stake, cravat and embroidered suspenders."
Woop! but he jumps! And now he talks to hisself, goin' furder,
Giddy, belike, in his head, but pushes for'ard to Rheinau,
Eglisau, and Kaiserstuhl, and Zurzach, and Waldshut,—
All are behind him, passin' one village after another
Down to Grenzach, and out on the broad and beautiful bottoms
Nigh unto Basle; and there he must stop and look after his license.

* * * * *

Look! isn't that y'r bridegroom a-comin' down yonder to meet you?—
Yes, it's him, it's him, I hear't, for his voice is so jolly!
Yes, it's him, it's him,—with his eyes as blue as the heavens,
With his Swiss knee-breeches o' green, and suspenders o' velvet,
With his shirt o' the color o' pearl, and buttons o' crystal,
With his powerful loins, and his sturdy back and his shoulders,
Grand in his gait, commandin', beautiful, free in his motions,
Proud as a Basle Councilman,—yes, it's the big boy o' Gothard![2 - The Rhine.]

The daring with which Hebel countrifies (or, rather, farmerizes, to translate Goethe's—word more literally) the spirit of natural objects, carrying his personifications to that point where the imaginative borders on the grotesque, is perhaps his strongest characteristic. His poetic faculty, putting on its Alemannic costume, seems to abdicate all ambition of moving in a higher sphere of society, but within the bounds it has chosen allows itself the utmost range of capricious enjoyment. In another pastoral, called "The Oatmeal Porridge," he takes the grain which the peasant has sown, makes it a sentient creature, and carries it through the processes of germination, growth, and bloom, without once dropping the figure or introducing an incongruous epithet. It is not only a child, but a child of the Black Forest, uttering its hopes, its anxieties, and its joys in the familiar dialect. The beetle, in his eyes, becomes a gross, hard-headed boor, carrying his sacks of blossom-meal, and drinking his mug of XX morning-dew; the stork parades about to show his red stockings; the spider is at once machinist and civil engineer; and even the sun, moon, and morning-star are not secure from the poet's familiarities. In his pastoral of "The Field-Watchmen," he ventures to say,—

Mister Schoolmaster Moon, with y'r forehead wrinkled with teachin',
With y'r face full o' larnin', a plaster stuck on y'r cheek-bone,
Say, do y'r children mind ye, and larn their psalm and their texes?

We much fear that this over-quaintness of fancy, to which the Alemannic dialect gives such a racy flavor, and which belongs, in a lesser degree, to the minds of the people who speak that dialect, cannot be successfully clothed in an English dress. Let us try, therefore, a little poem, the sentiment whereof is of universal application:—

THE CONTENTED FARMER

I guess I'll take my pouch, and fill
My pipe just once,—yes, that I will!
Turn out my plough and home'ards go:
Buck thinks, enough's been done, I know.

Why, when the Emperor's council's done,
And he can hunt, and have his fun,
He stops, I guess, at any tree,
And fills his pipe as well as me.

But smokin' does him little good:
He can't have all things as he would.
His crown's a precious weight, at that:
It isn't like my old straw hat.

He gits a deal o' tin, no doubt,
But all the more he pays it out;
And everywheres they beg and cry
Heaps more than he can satisfy.

And when, to see that nothin' 's wrong,
He plagues hisself the whole day long,
And thinks, "I guess I've fixed it now,"
Nobody thanks him, anyhow.

And so, when in his bloody clo'es
The Gineral out o' battle goes,
He takes his pouch, too, I'll agree,
And fills his pipe as well as me.

But in the wild and dreadfle fight,
His pipe don't taste ezackly right: