Excerpt, “Translations From The German Poets.” Edward Stanhope Pearson.  1879..

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Salutation of the Sea

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Measureless, serene, unending,

Still, but ne’er from boding free

Li’st thou there thy breadth extending

Aged, solemn, boundless Sea!

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Say, in tears should be my greeting

Such as well from mourners’ eyes,

When around the grave they’re meeting

One who cold and lifeless lies?

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For a churchyard vast and stilly

One capacious vault thou art,

Hidest feelingless and chilly

Many a hope and many a heart.

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Not one cross, one gravestone yonder

Marks the spot where buried lie

Thousands – on the strand there wander

Those whose tears are never dry.

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Would’st thou have me joyous greeting

Offer, as from him would rise

Whose first glance a garden meeting

Throws him into glad surprise?

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For a garden without measure,

And a wealthy field thou art,

Noble buds, and costly treasure

Lie within thy crystal heart.

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As a lawn with sunshine flooded

Shows thy surface green and still,

Coral groves with pearl-beds studded

Such the flowers thy depths which fill.

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As in gardens wand’rers straying,

Ships across the ocean go

Treasure seeking and conveying,

Meeting, passing to and fro.

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Should I weeping, should I shouting,

Ocean to thee raise my voice?

Idle question, useless doubting –

After all I have no choice.

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But as highest joy in weeping

Riseth still to thankful eyes,

So the grateful dewdrops steeping

Trees at dawn and sunset rise.

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When the Lord of all I’m meeting

And mine eyes in tears upturn,

So in tears once more I’m greeting

Fatherland with thoughts that burn.

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Weeping I my arms extended

When I saw my lov’d one near,

Weeping on the heights I bended

When I saw thee first appear.

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Excerpt, “The Last Knight:  A Romance Garland from the German of Anastasius Grün.”  Translated by John O. Sargent.  1871.

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Excerpt, “The Last Knight:  A Romance Garland from the German of Anastasius Grün.”  Translated by John O. Sargent.  1871.

A novel-length Life Ballad of Maximilian I (1459-1519), Holy Roman Emperor, King in Germany, of Hungary, Dalmatia, Croatia, etc. Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Count Palatine of Burgundy, Princely Count of Habsburg, Hainaut, Flanders, Tyrol, Gorizia, Artois, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, the Enns, Burgau, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Salins, Mechelen, etc.

Matthias Corvin, King of Hungary, the most illustrious monarch of his age, had been for 30 years the plague of the emperor, and had overrun Austria and taken Vienna in 1485.  Frederick was unwilling to pay the 700,000 florins he demanded for the evacuation of his territory; and the more so because the astrologers had predicted the king’s death in 1490.  In that year, it occurred.

Maximilian raised an army of several thousand men, and entered Vienna amid the acclamations of its citizens.  The citadel, occupied by an Hungarian garrison, resisted successfully two storming parties, in one of which the king who led it was wounded.  On the tenth day the garrison surrendered, and its fall was followed by the early surrender of other strongholds and the expulsion of the Hungarians from Austria.

To be continued…

Anton Alexander von Auersperg: This writer, belonging to the noble and princely house of Auersperg, was born April 11, 1806. He is known under the poetical pseudonym of Anastasius Grün. His poem entitled “The Last Knight” appeared in Munich in 1831; and his piece called “Walks of a Poet in Vienna” have gained him great celebrity, and placed him among the best of the living German Poets. Translated by N.L. Frothingham.

The Last Poet

“When will your bards be weary

Of rhyming on?  How long

Ere it is sung and ended,

The old, eternal song?

“It is not, long since, empty,

The horn of full supply;

And all the posies gathered,

And all the fountains dry?”

As long as the sun’s chariot

Yet keeps its azure track,

And but one human visage

Gives answering glances back;

As long as skies shall nourish

The thunderbolt and gale,

And, frightened at their fury,

One throbbing heart shall quail;

As long as after tempests

Shall spring one showery bow,

One breast with peaceful promise

And reconcilement glow;

As long as night the concave

Sows with its starry seed,

And but one man those letters

Of golden writ can read;

Long as a moonbeam glimmers,

Or bosom sighs a vow;

Long as the wood-leaves rustle

To cool a weary brow;

As long as roses blossom,

And earth is green in May;

As long as eyes shall sparkle

And smile in pleasure’s ray;

As long as cypress shadows

The graves more mournful make,

Of one cheek ‘s wet with weeping,

Or one poor heart can break;–

So long on earth shall wander

The goddess Poesy,

And with her, one exulting

Her votarist to be.

And singing on, triumphing,

The old earth-mansion through,

Out marches the last minstrel;

He is the last man too.

The Lord holds the creation

Forth in his hand meanwhile,

Like a fresh flower just opened;

And views it with a smile.

When once this Flower Giant

Begins to show decay,

And earths and suns are flying

Like blossom-dust away;

Then ask – if of the question

Not weary yet,– “How long

Ere it is sung and ended,

The old, eternal song?”

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Count Anton Alexander von Auersperg, also known under the pen name of Anastasius Grün (1806-1876), was an Austrian poet and liberal politician. Born in the capital of the Austrian Duchy of Carniola, he received his education first at the University of Graz, then at Vienna, where he studied jurisprudence.

In 1830, Auersperg succeeded to his ancestral property, and in 1832 appeared as a member at the Estates of Carniola on the Herrenbank of the diet in Laibach. Here he distinguished himself by his outspoken criticism of the Austrian government, leading the opposition of the duchy to the exactions of the central power. In 1832 the title of imperial chamberlain was conferred upon him.

After the Revolution of 1848 in Vienna, he represented the district of Laibach in the German Frankfort Parliament, to which he tried in vain to persuade his Slovene compatriots to send representatives. In 1861 he was nominated a life member of the Austrian upper house (Herrenhaus).

Count Auersperg’s first publication, a collection of lyrics, Blätter der Liebe (1830); his second production, Der letzte Ritter (1830), brought his genius to light. It celebrates the deeds and adventures of the emperor Maximilian (1499-1519) in a cycle of poems written in the strophic rhyme of the Nibelungenlied. But Auersperg’s fame rests almost exclusively on his political poetry; two collections entitled Spaziergänge eines Wiener Poeten (1831) and Schutt (1835) created a sensation in Germany by their originality and bold Realism. These two books, which are remarkable not merely for their outspoken opinions, but also for their easy versification and powerful imagery, were the forerunners of the German political poetry of 1840-1848.

A SALON SCENE

(1831)

Evening: In the festive halls the light of many candles gleams,

Shedding from the mirrors' crystal thousand-fold reflected beams.

In the sea of light are gliding, with a stately, solemn air,

Honored, venerable matrons, ladies young and very fair.

And among them wander slowly, clad in festive garments grand,

Here the valiant sons of battle, there the rulers of the land.

But on one that I see moving every eye is fixed with fear--

Few indeed among the chosen have the courage to draw near.

He it is by whose firm guidance Austrians' fortunes rise or sink,

He who in the Princes' Congress for them all must act and think.

But behold him now! How gracious, courteous, gentle he's to all,

And how modest, unassuming, and how kind to great and small!

In the light his orders sparkle with a faint and careless grace,

But a friendly, gentle smile is always playing on his face

When he plucks the ruddy rose leaves that some rounded bosom

 wears, Or when, like to withered blossoms, kingdoms

 he asunder tears.

Equally enchanting is it, when he praises golden curls,

Or when, from anointed heads, the royal crowns away he hurls.

Yes, methinks 'tis heavenly rapture, which delights the happy

man whom his words to Elba's fastness or to Munkacs' 

prison ban.

Could all Europe now but see him, so engaging, so gallant,

How the ladies, young and old, his winning smiles delight,

enchant;  how the church's pious clergy, and the doughty

men of war, and the state's distinguished servants by

his grace enraptured are.

Man of state and man of counsel, since you're in a mood so

kind, since you're showing to all present such a gracious 

frame of mind, see, without, a needy client standing waiting

at your door whom the slightest sign of favor will make

happy evermore.

And you do not need to fear him; he's intelligent and fair;

Hidden 'neath his homely garments, knife nor dagger does

he wear.  'Tis the Austrian people, open, honest, courteous

as can be.  See, they're pleading: "May we ask you for the

freedom to be free?"

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