Classic Poem

When I reached Cologne and heard the Rhine,
The dark was already falling.
I felt the effect of the German air —
In an appetite appalling.

On omelettes and ham I gladly supped,
And, seeing the ham so salt was,
I was driven of course to drink Rhine wine;
The bacon alone at fault was.

The Rhine wine sparkles golden still,
In the green, familiar rummer;
But, drink in excess, and your nose will flame
To the flaunting hue of summer,

The Rhine wine sparkles golden still,
In the green, familiar rummer;
But, drink in excess, and your nose will flame
To the flaunting hue of summer,

The stone-built houses looked down as if fain
To tell me the vanished story
Of old Cologne, the sacred town —
Its annals and legends hoary.

Once a pious priesthood spent its days,
To godly living schooled, here,
And, according to Ulrich von Hutten's tale,
The viri obscuri ruled here.

Mediaeval monks and nuns here danced
Through their cancan's lewd gyrations.
Hoogstraten, Cologne's grim Menzel, in gall
Here wrote his denunciations.

Round books and men the devouring flames
Of the pyre here leapt and panted,
While the loud and solemn bell was tolled,
And the Kyrie Eleison chanted.

Stupidity here, in the open street,
Like a dog with malice mated;
Religious intolerance still is the mark
Of its brood, and wrath unsated.

And see! in the pallid light of the moon,
A shape colossal towering!
'Tis Cologne's great minster against the sky
Like a devil darkly lowering.

It was built to be the mind's Bastille;
The hope that the Papists cherished
Was that German thought, imprisoned there,
Would languish till it perished.

But Luther arrived with his thundering " Halt! " —
Cried out on their hope, and killed it.
The cathedral stands as it stood that day;
Complete, they will never build it.

It will never be finished — and that is well;
For thus, in its baulked ambition,
As a monument of our German strength,
It fulfils a Protestant mission.

The bells on your charity-bags may ring;
You will fail, though you even solicit
From Jews and heretics shameless alms;
'Tis an idle dream — dismiss it.

In vain for this object the great Franz Liszt
May give concerts justly lauded,
And a talented king declaim himself hoarse,
By a loyal people applauded.

The cathedral will never be built to an end;
Though the Swabian fools have striven
To help to that consummation accurst,
By the shipload of stones they've given.

It will never be finished, however loud
May clamour the owl and raven —
Those mediaevally-minded birds
Who house in the steeple's haven.

Nay, more than that, the time will come —
I speak no foolish fable —
When the minster, far from achieving your dream,
Will be used as a common stable.

Then where shall we put — 'tis a puzzle indeed
To decide what the proper course is —
The Holy Three Kings of the Morning Land,
When the minster's a stable for horses?

I have frequently heard the question asked;
But the Holy Three Kings, when we rout them,
Will easily find some other home;
No need to trouble about them.

You can stow them away in Münster town,
Each in an iron basket —
In the three that hang on Saint Lambeth's Church —
That's my advice if you ask it.

And if one of the holy triumvirate
Should be missing, then take another;
Replace the king of the morning land
With an occidental brother.