Classic Poem

A tragic show will pass before you soon;
The curtain rises on a former age
That long hath sunk beneath the stream of time;
And battles, long decided, will once more
Before your eyes be stormily renewed.

Two men, both noble, honest, pious, brave,
Two friends, still firm and faithful e'en to death,
Chief names of Germany's heroic times —
These will ye soon behold in exile roam,
And, desperately fighting, sink in death.

'Tis aye the curse of that unhappy land
In which pure freedom and just laws lie low,
That still the noblest and the foremost men
Consume themselves in most unfruitful toil:
That they whose patriot feelings warmest glow
Are branded as betrayers of their land;
And they — their country's saviours lately called —
Must to a foreign hearth for refuge flee.
" And whilst the best men's strength is brought to naught,
There flourish — growing by the power of hell —
Pride, violence, base meanness, coward acts.

How different, when from a stormy time
Pure laws and order, freedom and just rights
Have struggled forth and, firmly fixed, struck root!

Then they, who grudgingly would stand aloof,
Now gladly join once more the burgher's ranks;
Then every hand and every spirit works
Fore-reaching, active, for the general weal;
Then gleams the throne, then thrives the town, then teem
The fruitful crops, then men look proud and free;
The prince's and the people's rights are twined
Together, as the vine entwines the elm,
And for the sanctuary's secure defence
Each gladly ventures both his lands and life.

Men gladly turn themselves from troublous scenes
To revel in the happy realms of art,
And for the sicknesses of painful truths
Men turn for healing to the poet's dreams.
To-day, however, should the stage's shows
Wound any, let him think (to comfort him)
What feast we celebrate in sober truth!
Then may he know for what true heroes die.

Still Deities descend to visit earth;
Still do those noble thoughts awake to life
Which men in every age have loftiest deemed.
Yes! in the middle of a 'wildered age
Arises, moved spontaneously, a Prince,
Who nobly to his people gives his hand
In willing pledge of order and just laws.
This have ye seen, ye all can witness this;
Let history on her tablets grave it deep!
Hail to this monarch, to this people hail!