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Rastatt (10) - ZaunköniG - 12.06.2008 Rastatt I Yet morning comes with pageantry of fire, And evening falls with majesty of flame, And every hour hath something to reclaim The waste of life, slow wilting behind wire. It were a doleful dungeon that could tire Nature's incessant carefulness to shame Sheer stalemate from each thing that lives, and claim All motion for her universal choir. Thus day by dreary day the chargèd hours Pass influence from the sweetness of the hills Across these cages, and the scent of flowers Is wafted, and the fragant dew distils, And unimaginable stir of powers From the deep sense of woods divinely thrills. II Two silent influences mainly move The captive's mind, not wholly sunk in sloth, Nor lost in carnal craving - dangers both That to the core the sterling manhood prove. One is the sense of shrinkage, of the groove In which the soul enshuttled - O how loth! - Feels stoppage of life's pulse, arrested growth, Heart-sickness which no medicine can remove. The other wakens when departing night Throws up the windows of the spacious morn Upon a new day pulsing with new light; And from the hill the hunter with his horn Sends down imagined valleys strains that smite The spirit with the sense of something born. III Within these cages day by day we pace The bitter shortness of the meted span; And this and that way variously we plan Our poor excursions over the poor place, Cribbed to extinction. Yet remains one grace. For neither bars nor tented wir can ban Full many a roving glance that dares to scan The roomy hill, and wanders into space. Yea, and remains for ever unrepealed And unimpaired the free impetuous quest Of the mind's soaring eye, at length unsealed To the full measure of a life possessed Awhile, but never counted, now revealed Inestimable, wonderful, unguessed. IV The long day waned beneath refulgent skies, And evening sunshine bathed the hilltops round, Where on the sudden from the level ground Pine-vestured, solemn, summit by summit rise The tops of the Black Forest. Wistful eyes Wandered from peak to peak, as if to sound Their mystery, if perchance there might be found Some healing essence there, some glad surprise. Long strove the puzzled spirit, vainly yearned Into that alien soul to force its way; When suddenly - the mystic rune was learned! And in an upland glen remote and gray There moved a presence known and last discerned In Glendaruel on a morn of May. V O May! O month of months divinely dear, Which severest, amidst the toil and strife Of Nature's round, as with a glittering knife, A perfect segment from the varying year! Month of entrancing spaces, wide and clear, Calling us to the open, thick with life, All leaf and lamb and freshness, welling, rife With blossom-can it be that thou art here? O that it were in some sweet Scottish strath, Backed by the mountains, watered, green and wide, Where the Tay laves in shallow crystal bath His pebbles, or the Forth's meandering tide Receives Dumyat's shadow o'er his path, And young light breaks down Ochill's mottled side. VI As the lone searcher, crouching o'er his glass, Beside the window while the light is high, Doth moved therin the forms of things descry Invisible else to common vision crass; Spirilla, the amoeba's sprawling mass, With gliding infusoria sailing by - And marks each vestige with entranced eye, Glimmer, emerge and clear, dissolve and pass; So in that optic lens, where never yet The sun prevailed, beneath my prison wall, One-windowed to the past, but brightly lit By the eye's own pure light, a swarm of small And fleeting memories, else forgotten, flit, Trivial, yet entrancing to recall. VII Oft at the hour when night's aerial spring Waters with dew the beauty of the morn, What time another rory day is born, Along these lanes the echoing footsteps ring Of marching men, who to their marching sing, Deep-voiced, light-hearted. Yet they do not scorn Due pause and measure, and the theme well-worn From the full heart of Germany they bring. But we, whose fathers once in songs as fine Unburdened hearts as full, and with the power Of our dear country pulsing in each line, Scorn to remember England, and to our Incomparable heritage of song Prefer the tinkle of some mean ding-dong. VIII All is not well with England. Her great heart Beats faultily and to no music set. She hath her moods, suspicions, and doth fret The daylong hour, by night doth toss and start. Oft she stands dreaming in the crowded mart. 'Tis true that this distemper doth not yet The deeper functions of her life beset, And mightily she plays her mighty part. Ye´t sometimes in this tempest the heart fears Whether, so faulted, the old anchor grips. And shall we find, we ask, when the sky clears, England still mightier than England's slips? Let our own past proclaim it. Let the years Advance and set their trumpets to their lips. IX The root of our infirmity is found In English liberty, grandly achieved, Yet little understood and ill conceived, And sprouding rank from the uncultured ground. Too much the thought prevails that man unbound Is man made free, a life oft unretrieved From chaos by a content; undeceived Only when licence runs the ship aground. O England! Mother! whom thine every child Loves, surely, to the last, forgive that some Must fear the loss of thy benignant strength Through the mind's error - lest, too freely wild, Thy liberty of indifference become A liberty of impotence at length. X There is no single foot of English soil, Howe'er defaced, that is not holy ground. There is no spot where great souls more abound, Or whrere man's greatness is more truly royal. Who hath o'ertopped our Shakespeare? Who by toil Of kingly thought more loftly, more profound, Than Newton e'er from heaven's majestic round Brought home at night a more stupendous spoil? One thing I find not well. In our reserve We oft-times cloak our exellence, ashamed Not of our imperfections, but our Best; And what is finest, most our own, we serve In some mean dish, or pass it by unclaimed, Leaving the noble in us unexpressed. |