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(From The Lay of the Stork)
SUNSET! on the plain that spreads | |
| Onward to the glowing Rhine: | |
| Sunset on the purple heads | |
| Of Alsatia’s mountain line: | |
| Red sunset on the vines that creep | 5 |
| Far along the rocky steep, | |
| Till those giant forests rise | |
| Dark against the clear, broad skies, | |
| All streaked and flecked with sunset’s glow, | |
| Down to the river’s banks below. | 10 |
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| Silver Neckar! crimsoned o’er | |
| With the beam, from shore to shore, | |
| Silver Neckar! devious still, | |
| Doubling, turning at thy will, | |
| Circling through the meadows’ maze, | 15 |
| Joyous in the golden blaze, | |
| Till thy waters, full and free, | |
| Swell the Rhine’s majestic sea. | |
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| Odenwald! in misty gray | |
| Fade thy crowding heights away: | 20 |
| But fair Heidelberg stands out, | |
| All her ruins girt about | |
| With a diadem of gold, | |
| Such as crowned her once of old, | |
| When two royal lovers stood, 1 | 25 |
| Gazing from this charméd grove, | |
| Blest in tender solitude, | |
| Till ambition conquered love. | |
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| Velleda! prophetess, whose fane | |
| Gave place to these abodes of joy, | 30 |
| Didst thou foretell—alas!—in vain! | |
| What fate their glories should destroy, | |
| And this fair temple be as lone, | |
| As desolate, as erst thy own? | |
| Ah! in the changes wrought by Time, | 35 |
| Whose sullen waves roll fiercely on, | |
| What boots, amidst his course sublime, | |
| A race of kings,—or prophets,—gone! | |
