Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.
An Old Autumn Sunset at Heidelberg
By John WeissN
Stand the autumn trees;
Golden sunlight from a depth of blue
Warms the earth of tawny hue,
And constant Nature calls to mind the time
I adored her in another clime.
O, those ripening hours by Neckar’s stream,
When I sat amid the gleam
Of purple vine-leaves drunken with the sun;
Gazing from some peak I won
Into valleys dropping brown, and deep
Where the shadows sleep
Among chestnuts and the cones of pine;
Looking at the tender line
Of misty hills in distant France,
As they tossed me back the glance
Of Nature’s vintage-maker, o’er the plain
Seemingly steeped in golden rain,
O’er the Rhine, and back to Neckar’s hills
Where the radiance fills
The thunder-riven clefts of tower and keep,
Battered rooms of queens upon the steep:
Thus restored, as if some olden day
Had left its princely sunset here to stay,
Since the princely chambers must decay.
See, the chasms are mended
With the vapor splendid,
Till they ’re solid for the ivy’s foot,
Seem new vantage for the harebell’s root.
O, that golden afternoon,
When unto the mountain-spur
Whence Tilly rained his murder down,
Floated up like gossamer
Above the sleepy, silent town,
That harvest tune!