The Boulder.

        Einst ziert' ich, den Aether durchspähend,
        Als Spitze des Urgebirg's Stock,
        Ruhm, Hoheit und Stellung verschmähend,
        Ward ich zum erratischen Block.


Once high on the mountain-peak rising,
    In sunlight I shone like a flame;
But height and position despising,
    A wandering boulder became.

They say of a thinker's bold sallies,
    He goes where the ice will not bear;
I was beckoned to false hollow valleys,
    By snow maids, seductive and fair.

Thus driven by furious fancies,
    I went down the hill with a shout;
But atoned for my youthful romances
    By a thousand years rolling about.

Cried the Glacier, his teeth sharply showing,
    Here, my blade, you'll be polished right well,
And from my moraine-offal going,
    As a stranger be borne from the dell.

Then be scratched and be scraped and be driven,
    I rolled to a rock that was cracked,
But with blows was knocked upward to heaven,
    Be twisted, be puffed, and be whacked.

Just try to be proper and decent
    In chaotic upheavals of mud!
Down I sunk, down to periods recent,
    When the ice wall went off in the flood.

And rough is the rôle he unravels
    Who plays in an ice part - ah, me!
On a flake I set out on my travels,
    And the ice cake soon melted at sea.

Plimp, plump! down I went to the bottom,
    For ages lay sleeping in clay,
Until the heat finally caught 'em,
    And Glacier and Flood dried away.

Then the Sun, with a hotter light blazing,
    Shone down where the billows once played;
And with the rhinoceros grazing,
    The mammoth was seen in the glade.

Now we from the driving ice fast-time
    Are useful, although it be late,
And to heathen and Christian for pastime
    Give stones for the Church and the State.

                    *    *    *    *    *

Two geologists made up this ditty
    In the vale between Aaré and Reuss;
And the inn where they sang it, so witty,
    Was all built of boulders of gneiss.

They sang with deep feeling dramatic,
    To the landscape of Findling so fine;
Then went like two boulders erratic,
    Both tumbling and stumbling with wine.

Translated From The German Of Joseph Victor Scheffel By Charles G. Leland.