Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

"AH! what 's the matter?" oft I cry,

Starting from slumber deep

"Ah! what's the matter? isn't she here?
What? where? was I asleep?"

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

Even by broad day, at times, I start,
As out of slumber deep,

And cry:

[ocr errors]

"Where is she? wasn't she here?

What? where? was I asleep?"

CARLSRUHE, March 10, 1856.

'I TOOK thee for a rose, thou 'rt but a poppy.
Why must I come so nigh? why could I not
Thine odour have imagined? I had so

Been richer now by one sweet rose the more.

CARLSRUHE, May 20, 1856.

*See DIRGE FOR THE XIII. DEC. MDCCCLII in My Book; also POEMS CHIEFLY PHILOSOPHICAL, pages 181, 208 and 285.

[merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

As bees their cells build and as birds their nests,

As spiders weave and as Allegri painted

By nature, not by art

thou madest thy verses:

Even therefore art thou, in these times of art,
These times, par excellence, of civilisation,
So little known or heard of, Oehlenschlaeger!
Till Nature reigns again and puts to flight

Pedants and sophists, there's no chance for thee.
CARLSRUHE, April 16, 1856.

IF I hadn't thee to love I would love something else,

To love, in itself is so lovely;

And if that something failed me I 'd still something love,
But I'd never love any thing as I love thée,
So stay with me thou and don't leave me.

CARLSRUHE, May 19, 1856.

INSCRIPTION FOR THE FRONT OF THE PEDESTAL

OF A LATELY DECEASED POET'S STATUE.

In this marble behold him, the wise and the good,
The philosopher poet, our glory and pride;

He's gone from among us, but with us still live
And for ever will live in our hearts writ, his verses.

INSCRIPTION FOR THE BACK OF THE SAME.

BECAUSE I was wiser and better than they,

They hated and shunned or despised me while living, And, to show how rejoiced they were, when I was dead Collected subscriptions and sét up this statue.

CARLSRUHE, March 22, 1856.

IN A LADY'S ALBUM.

THE author's volume 's a monarchic state;

Its thoughts, serfs of one mighty potentate:
Here in the democratic album, see

The land of literary liberty,

Where high and low and great and small agree
Burghers to live in love and amity.

CARLSRUHE, April 4, 1856.

Written on the margin of a leaf of Goethe's Faust.

ERE Mephistopheles thou took'st in hand,

It 's pity, Goethe, that thou hadst not had

A lesson or two from the old, blind puritan,

Who would have rapped thee soundly o'er the knuckles
If he had caught thee travestying Satan,

And well thine éars boxed, hadst thou dared to tell him
Thou knew'st no difference 'twixt a fallen archangel
And a mere vulgar scamp and ticket-of-léave man.
CARLSRUHE, 1856.

"How lovely these flowers, and how sweet the birds sing!" Thus said to me once Eleanore,

As we walked in the garden, one fine morn in spring,
Myself and my sweet Eleanore:

[ocr errors]

"Where, where are the flowers? and what birds do you mean?" But she blushed, my own sweet Eleanore,

For then for the first time she saw I didn't mind

Birds or flowers when beside Eleanore.

CARLSRUHE, May 20, 1856.

BELIEVE him not, no matter how he swears;
Into his eye look; there 's no kindness in it:
He cannot be your friend or any man's.
CARLSRUHE, May 18, 1856.

TO SELINA.

THE months that with them violets bring,
Bring not to me the sweetest spring;
The months the sweetest spring to me
Bring, dearest girl, that bring me thee;
Stay with me, then, and 'twill be here'
The sweetest spring, to me, all year.
CARLSRUHE, May 13, 1856.

OH, the pink of all mill'ners is sweet Poesy!
For where is the mill'ner so well knows as she,

To deck the bare pélt out in robes of all hue,

-

Purple velvets, blond laces, silks green, red and blue From her own fancy's lóom all, all sparkling and new?

CARLSRUHE, May 15, 1856.

« PredošláPokračovať »