Classic Poem

Nay, chant no more from burning climes
Your sensuous and fantastic rhymes,
In praise of those barbaric times
Filled thick with rancorous legions.
How may such heathen deeds contrast,
Though once they have set the world aghast,
With that imperishable past
Hallowing my winsome regions?

What Christly influence wraps my stream
With delicate sanctity supreme,
Like slumberous mists that brood and gleam
When summer dawns are breathless!
What songs my haunted bosom sings
Of reverend legendary things,
In soft mediaeval murmurings,
Melodiously deathless!

Cologne, with what sublime consent
Have faith and poesy interblent
In smooth harmonious minglement,
To achieve thy sacred token!
Behold the intense embodied prayer,
Whose words of stone are uttering there
One silent Credo in sculpture, where
The Amen is still unspoken!

Within my broad mellifluous tide
Inveterate souvenirs abide

Of saintly trust, of knightly pride,
Going forth as dread invaders.
Continual visions crowd my banks
Of stalwart steeds with blazoned flanks,
That eastward bore in tireless ranks
The old hardy-thewed Crusaders!

I saw wide monasteries crown
The crags that o'er my waters frown,
Where nuns with pensive eyes looked down,
While evening dews fell moister;
Or where the tonsured monks would bow,
Obedient to their priestly vow,
Before Our Lady's aureoled brow,
In many a lonesome cloister.

For me the fat bluff burgher quaffed
Brown ale when freed from toilful craft,
With many a gay jest, while he laughed,
That kind remembrance harbors;
For me the Minnesingers made
Lyrics where halcyon fancies played,
Like variant sunbeams mixed with shade
Below their grape-hung arbors.

The aromas of romantic lore
Yet linger round my sacred shore,
Where ghostly nixies combed of yore
Blond locks that coiled and glistened;
Where cold swan-maidens glided white,
Where elves held carnival by night,
Where the lone Lorelei on the height
Sang death to all who listened!

Ah, still gold-haired Gunhilda tells
The undying tale of Drachenfels;
Through Zündorf still, by darksome spells,
The Wasserman spreads deep sadness;
In vale or thicket still I note
The erl-kings and the fairies float,
Or that fleet will-o'-the-wisp who smote
The Kreutzberg monk with madness!

But dolorous deeds have stained me red
When feudal princes met and bled,
When troops of desperate peasants fled
While baron-thieves marauded;
I saw dense fights round bastioned towers,
Meek maidens, ravished from their bowers,
And insolent prelates mock the powers
Their soldieries defrauded.

Yet spite of hours thus dimmed with woe,
This heaven above me smiles to know
That peerless among all kin I flow
Beneath its blue pavilions.
Dead Chivalry's dearest worth was mine;
Unique, incomparable, I shine,
The old castle-skirted storied Rhine,
Beloved by bordering millions!