Classic Poem

But the people themselves have altered more
Than even the hapless city;
Like peripatetic ruins they go—
A sight to wake one's pity.

The thin have grown thinner, and fatter the fat,
The children are old and staid now;
And those that were old are children again,
Dependent on other's aid now.

And many are bullocks who used to be calves
In the days when we sojourned together,
And many a gosling now goes as a goose,
In proud and flaunting feather.

I found old Gudel bedizened and decked
With a siren's alluring brightness;
She was sporting a wig of raven hair
And teeth of dazzling whiteness.

My stationer friend in resisting change
Had approved himself far the aptest;
With his halo of yellow hair framing his head,
He might pass for John the Baptist.

Of I caught but a glimpse, he fled
Too fast to be overtaken;
I hear that his soul was burnt, and insured
By Bieber whose credit was shaken.

I saw my good old censor, too,
In the mist bent almost double;
We met in the square where they traffic in geese;
He seemed oppressed by some trouble.

We stopped and shook hands; there were tears in his eyes,
Unless I much deceive me;
He said he was happy to meet me again—
'Twas a touching scene, believe me.

There were many I missed and could not find—
Their earthly race was over.
My Gumpelino mortal eye
Shall never more discover.

To this noble soul quite recently
Release by death was given,
And he hovers round Jehovah's throne
With the Seraphim in heaven.

For the crooked Adonis I hunted in vain.
Who hawked with shouts and sallies
His porcelain cups and bedroom ware
In Hamburg's streets and alleys.

I have no notion whether to-day
Alive or dead little Meyer is;
I missed him, but I quite forgot
At Cornet's to make inquiries.

Campe has lost his faithful dog.
All his authors together, as far as
His personal grief was concerned, might have died
Less mourned than his poodle Sarras.

From time immemorial Christians and Jews
Have peopled Hamburg city.
The former are rather a niggardly race:
'Tis little they give for pity.

And yet they are not so very bad—
They keep an excellent table;
They are also prompt in meeting their bills—
When they've run them as long as they're able.

The Jews are divided against themselves;
Each party's the only true one.
The old one sticks to the Synagogue,
Round the Temple rallies the new one.

They of the new school eat their pork,
And rebel against customs pious;
They are democrats, while the old school shows
An aristocratic bias.

I love the old, I love the new,
The fossilized and the flighty;
Yet to both I prefer a smoke-cured sprat.
I swear it by God Almighty!