The Legends of the Rhine

Beetling walls with ivy grown,
Frowning heights of mossy stone;
Turret, with its flaunting flag
Flung from battlemented crag;
Dungeon-keep and fortalice
Looking down a precipice
Oer the darkly glancing wave
By the Lurline-haunted cave;
Robber haunt and maiden bower,
Home of Love and Crime and Power,
Thats the scenery, in fine,
Of the Legends of the Rhine.

One bold baron, double-dyed
Bigamist and parricide,
And, as most the stories run,
Partner of the Evil One;
Injured innocence in white,
Fair but idiotic quite,
Wringing of her lily hands;
Valor fresh from Paynim lands,
Abbot ruddy, hermit pale,
Minstrel fraught with many a tale,
Are the actors that combine
In the Legends of the Rhine.

Bell-mouthed flagons round a board;
Suits of armor, shield, and sword;
Kerchief with its bloody stain;
Ghosts of the untimely slain;
Thunder-clap and clanking chain;
Headsmans block and shining axe;
Thumb-screw, crucifixes, racks;
Midnight-tolling chapel bell,
Heard across the gloomy fell,
These and other pleasant facts
Are the properties that shine
In the Legends of the Rhine.

Maledictions, whispered vows
Underneath the linden boughs;
Murder, bigamy, and theft;
Travelers of goods bereft;
Rapine, pillage, arson, spoil,
Everything but honest toil,
Are the deeds that best define
Every Legend of the Rhine.

That Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword;
That Providence has special care
Of gallant knight and lady fair;
That villains, as a thing of course,
Are always haunted by remorse,
Is the moral, I opine,
Of the Legends of the Rhine.

Bret Harte

Bret Harte was an American author and poet, renowned for his works about pioneering life in California. Born on August 25, 1836, he gained national fame with his short stories and poetry depicting life in the early mining camps. His most famous works include 'The Luck of Roaring Camp' and 'The Outcasts of Poker Flat.' Harte's writings played a crucial role in shaping the Western genre in American literature. He passed away on May 5, 1902.

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English

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Epistle From The Rhine.

To Y ---, with a bowl of Bohemian glass.


From rocky hills, where climbs the vine;
Where on his waves the wandering Rhine
Sees imaged ruins, towns and towers,
Bare mountain scalps, green forest bowers;
From that broad land of poetry,
Wild legend, noble history,
This token many a day bore I,
To lay it at your feet, dear Y - -.

Little the stupid bowl will tell
Of all that on its way befell,
Since from old Frankfort's free domain,
Where smiling vineyards skirt the main,
It took its way; what sunsets red
Their splendours o'er the mountains shed,
How the blue Taunus' distant height
Like hills of fire gave back the light,
And how, on river, rock, and sky,
The sun declined so tenderly,
That o'er the scene white moonlight fell,
Ere...

Frances Anne Kemble

The Rhine

'Twas morn, and beauteous on the mountain's brow
(Hung with the clusters of the bending vine)
Shone in the early light, when on the Rhine
We bounded, and the white waves round the prow
In murmurs parted: varying as we go,
Lo! the woods open, and the rocks retire,
As some gray convent-wall or glistening spire
'Mid the bright landscape's track unfolding slow!
Here dark, with furrowed aspect, like Despair,
Frowns the bleak cliff! There on the woodland's side
The shadowy sunshine pours its streaming tide;
Whilst Hope, enchanted with the scene so fair,
Counts not the hours of a long summer's day,
Nor heeds how fast the prospect winds away.

William Lisle Bowles

The Rivers.

        RHINE.

True, as becometh a Switzer, I watch over Germany's borders;
But the light-footed Gaul jumps o'er the suffering stream.


    RHINE AND MOSELLE.

Many a year have I clasped in my arms the Lorrainian maiden;
But our union as yet ne'er has been blest with a son.


    DANUBE IN    

Round me are dwelling the falcon-eyed race, the Phaeacian people;
Sunday with them never ends; ceaselessly moves round the spit.


    MAIN.

Ay, it is true that my castles are crumbling; yet, to my comfort,
Have I for centuries past seen my old race still endure.


    SAALE.

Short is my course, during which I salute many princes and nations;
Yet the princes are good ay! and the nations are free.

Friedrich Schiller

Cobbler Keezars Vision

The beaver cut his timber
With patient teeth that day,
The minks were fish-wards, and the crows
Surveyors of highway,

When Keezar sat on the hillside
Upon his cobblers form,
With a pan of coals on either hand
To keep his waxed-ends warm.

And there, in the golden weather,
He stitched and hammered and sung;
In the brook he moistened his leather,
In the pewter mug his tongue.

Well knew the tough old Teuton
Who brewed the stoutest ale,
And he paid the goodwifes reckoning
In the coin of song and tale.

The songs they still are singing
Who dress the hills of vine,
The tales that haunt the Brocken
And whisper down the Rhine.

Woodsy and wild and lonesome,
The swift stream wound away,
Through birches and scar...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Ballad

Der noble Ritter Hugo
Von Schwillensaufenstein,
Rode out mit shper and helmet,
Und he coom to de panks of de Rhine.

Und oop dere rose a meermaid,
Vot hadnt got nodings on,
Und she say, Oh, Ritter Hugo,
Vhere you goes mit yourself alone?

And he says, I rides in de creenwood,
Mit helmet und mit shpeer,
Til I coomes into em Gasthaus,
Und dere I trinks some beer.

Und den outshpoke de maiden
Vot hadnt got nodings on:
I dont dink mooch of beoplesh
Dat goes mit demselfs alone.

Youd petter coom down in de wasser,
Vhere deres heaps of dings to see,
Und hafe a shplendid tinner
Und drafel along mit me.

Dere you sees de fisch a schwimmin,
Und you catches dem efery von:
So sang dis wasser maiden

Charles Godfrey Leland

The Mississippi

Onward rolls the Royal River, proudly sweeping to the sea,
Dark and deep and grand, forever wrapt in myth and mystery.
Lo he laughs along the highlands, leaping o'er the granite walls;
Lo he sleeps among the islands, where the loon her lover calls.
Still like some huge monster winding downward through the prairied plains,
Seeking rest but never finding, till the tropic gulf he gains.
In his mighty arms he claspeth now an empire broad and grand;
In his left hand lo he graspeth leagues of fen and forest land;
In his right the mighty mountains, hoary with eternal snow,
Where a thousand foaming fountains singing seek the plains below.
Fields of corn and feet of cities lo the mighty river laves,
Where the Saxon sings his ditties o'er the swarthy warriors' graves.

Aye, before the...

Hanford Lennox Gordon