Scattering, beneficent, the healing dew.
Above, upon the wall, a crucified
Jesus, in copperplate, with drooping head
And pierced and bleeding side, gives up the ghost;
Grim tragedy! in box-wood re-enacted
Upon the opposite wall, between the windows,
With the addition of the Mother's woe,
And weeping Mary Magdalen and John.
Gladly the eye, more gladly still the mind,
Away from both turns, and upon a group
In party-colored, Meissen china-ware,
Upon a walnut stand between the windows,
Under the boxwood carving, rests content,
And has no need to travel to Arcadia
For dancing shepherd youths and shepherd maids,
And innocence and peace, and pipes Pandaean.
The stand adorning, either side the group,
Ten red, ripe apples tempt, in double row.
Another walnut table, in the corner,
On the door's right hand as you enter, serves
Saint John the Baptist for a wilderness,
And there, twelve inches high, stands in the middle
The box-carved saint, with coat of camel's hair,
And lamb and cross, and scroll significant
What fate awaits the man who takes in hand
To teach the people, him awaits, who dares
To raise his voice high against vice and folly
Him the benevolent, imprudent man
Who fain would lessen human misery,
And benefit, not use, his fellow men,
Shaming the triple crown and sceptered czar.
Written in vain the scroll and lost in vain
The precious life; the obdurate heart of Man
The words cons scrupulous, but draws no moral.
A loaf of sugar stands upon the floor
Under the table, and an open box
Full of the powdered sweet, for kitchen use
Or pantry, ready, or to neutralize
The bitter of Bohea or coffee cup,
And German manufactured, not of stripes
And human kidnapping, and greed of gold
Even more accursed than Polymestor's, smelling,
And curdling the heart's blood. Upon a rack
Behind the door a petticoat hangs snug
And two gowns, that of red stuff, these of gray.
The rack runs round the room, and every pin
Its separate burthen carries, seidel, maas,
Or double maas, all shining bright in order;
Of gray stone-ware some, some of glass, some pewter:
Twenty-five seidels first of gray stone-ware,
With lids of pewter hinged on stone-ware handles,
Engraved on every lid Johann Stadler's name
In fair broad cipher, and the year of Christ
In which the seidel from the potter's hand
Into this world of woe came and beer-drinking.
Twenty glass seidels follow, with glass handles,
And similar pewter lids and name and date.
Come, next, of glass twelve seidels with glass handles
And white enameled china lids bound round
With pewter rims and hinged on to the handles;
In painted colors, orange, green, and blue,
Of weal or woe, each lid speaks to the heart,
Or shows a landscape; high Maria Plain,
Or Berchtesgaden at the Watzmann's foot,
Or Salzburg Castle; or his seidel's lid
Exhibits the beer-drinker to himself,
Seidel in one hand, meerschaum in the other,
Rubicund picture of earth's happiness
Sensual, till the intellect grows dim,
The red, swollen, bolster limbs break out in sores,
And the fat paunch, blue lip, and yellow eye
And sunken cheek and laboring chest announce
The crazy ship aground run, and no hope
In sail or rudder, more, or pilot's skill.
Last of the seidels, twelve of glass come then,
Glass-handled, without lid. In long array,
The larger beer-jugs follow, maases called,
Each maas two seidels, all of gray stone-ware,
With lids of pewter hinged on stone-ware handles;
Thirty they are in count. Three stone-ware jugs
With lids of pewter hinged on stone-ware handles,
And each enough large to contain three maases,
Hang from the last three pins, right hand the door,
O'ershadowing John the Baptist, and the rear
Of the long file round bringing to the front.
A shelf o'ertops the rack, and round the room
Runs with it high up, not far from the ceiling;
Seventy-seven pewter plates, on edge, its burthen,
And forty-five round, and four oval, dishes,
These delf, those pewter; five saltcellers then
Of delf, two pewter coffee-pots, and six
Fidibus-holders pewter, and
And here my faithful inventory ends,
Precise, as if I had been about to let
My chamber in the inn at Lamprechtshausen
Stay, upon the floor
Two square, glass-bottled brandy gardevins,
Neither close locked nor empty rarest sight
Of all rare sights for Anglo-Saxon eyes,
And not without much faith to be believed
One stool, two wooden-bottomed chairs, two stuffed,
And on the end wall, opposite the door,
Above a chest of drawers a framed and glazed
Engrossed certificate that Johann Stadler
Of Lamprechtshausen 's an admitted member
Of the Society Agricultural,
Which for the public weal
Who ever heard of a society meeting
For other object than the public weal?
Its meetings holds in Salzburg every Friday..
And so my task 's brought to an end, sweet reader;
How faithfully, judge for thyself, first time
Thou 'rt led by chance or fate or inclination,
To sleep in the same room I slept last night in,
In Johann Stadler's inn in Lamprechtshausen,
Well furnished temple of Gambrinus Divus,
And seldom without votaries, even or morn,
Or holiest sabbath afternoon, or when
Festival kirmes gathers to the dance
Young, old, and middle aged, the country round,
And harp and fiddle and Man's sweeter voice
Alternate rouse the slumbering ear of Night,
And once again on earth, there's paradise.
OVER Port Vendre hangs the morning sun,
As from our humble cabaret in Salces,
We hold, along the bright, smooth road, our way Southward toward Spain, and new sights and new sounds. Already in the shade, Les Monts Alberes,
Rising before us slope upon the left,
Indent the sky with ever varying outline.
High on the right, before us, Canigou
With all his snowy tops stands glistening white
In the full rays. Alert our step and light,
Along the scarce two-foot-high, close-cropped hedge
Of Atriplex cerulean, overpeered
From the offside by feathery Tamarisk,
Not on mount Sinai here, nor dropping manna
Or Lycium europaeum's verdant twig,
Sufficient, though scant, shelter; for today
Sleeps in his ice-cold caves the Mistral king
Who, yesterday, upon our way to Salces,
So vexed us, and the Giant Reeds so bent
That border the clear well of Estramer.
Rivesaltes behind us left, and Estagel
Birthplace of Arago, mathematician,
But far too honest for good politician,
And in unhonored grave forgotten rests
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