Classic Poem

This is the forest of Teutoburg
Of which Tacitus has written:
The classic morass where Varus stuck,
And the Roman host was smitten.

By Hermann, the noble Cheruscian prince,
They were beaten, and died inglorious;
The German nation triumphed here,
And rose from the mud victorious.

Had Hermann and his fair-haired hordes
Met the fate that was the foeman's,
German freedom had never been even a name,
For we had all been Romans.

And Latin customs and speech would have ruled,
In the land that ours by right is.
In Munich we should have had vestals now,
And Swabians called Quirites.

And Hengstenberg, an aruspex wise,
Would be raking in bowels of kine now;
As an augur, Neander be watching the flight
Of birds in search of a sign now.

Birch-Pfeiffer had tippled her turpentine neat,
As the Roman ladies used to.
(More sweetly, they say, those smelt who drank,
And not many, I fancy, refused to).

Our Raumer instead of a German scamp,
Would in Latin have hight scampatius ,
And Freiligrath would have been writing his verse
Unrhymed, like Flaccus Horatius.

That boorish beggar, Father John,
Would be known as Boorianus ,
And Massmann, Me Hercule! Latin would talk.
As Marcus Tullius Massmanus.

The friends of truth would be fighting no more
With curs in the press; the arena
They would figure in rather, at mortal grips
With the lion, jackal, hyena.

We should now have had only one, instead
Of six-and-thirty, Neros.
To defy the tyrant's myrmidons
We had opened our veins like heroes.

Our Schelling, known as Seneca,
Would have perished like him. Our dictum
On the works of our own Cornelius had been,
" Cacatum non est pictum. "

Thank God! the Romans were put to flight,
And the victory was Hermann's;
Varus succumbed with his legions doomed,
And we remained good Germans.

We're a German folk with a German tongue,
Which will serve its turn, and pass in us;
And the Swabians — well, they are Swabians still,
And an ass is an ass, not asinus .

We're a German folk with a German tongue,
Which will serve its turn, and pass in us;
And the Swabians — well, they are Swabians still,
And an ass is an ass, not asinus .

Massmann, thank God! speaks no Latin at all;
The drama Birch-Pfeiffer's trade is,
And she tipples no nasty turpentine
Like the gallant Roman ladies.

O Hermann, to you we owe it all!
It is right you should be rewarded
With a monument brave at Detmold built.
I myself have subscribed toward it.