| IN the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadowlands | |
| Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands. | |
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| Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song, | |
| Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng: | |
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| Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold, | 5 |
| Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old; | |
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| And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme, | |
| That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime. | |
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| In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band, | |
| Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand; | 10 |
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| On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days | |
| Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise. | |
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| Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art: | |
| Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart; | |
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| And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone, | 15 |
| By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own. | |
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| In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust, | |
| And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust; | |
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| In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare, | |
| Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air. | 20 |
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| Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart, | |
| Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art; | |
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| Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand, | |
| Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land. | |
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| Emigravit is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies; | 25 |
| Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies. | |
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| Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair, | |
| That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air! | |
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| Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes, | |
| Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains. | 30 |
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| From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild, | |
| Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build. | |
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| As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme, | |
| And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime; | |
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| Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom | 35 |
| In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom. | |
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| Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft, | |
| Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed. | |
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| But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor, | |
| And a garland in the window, and his face above the door; | 40 |
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| Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song, | |
| As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long. | |
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| And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care, | |
| Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair. | |
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| Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye | 45 |
| Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry. | |
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| Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard; | |
| But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler bard. | |
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| Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away, | |
| As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay: | 50 |
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| Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, | |
| The nobility of labor,—the long pedigree of toil. | |
