Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.
German Nursery Song
By From the GermanTranslated by C. T. Brooks
O S
How many a buried soldier is lying ’neath thee there!
How many a fair and gallant one is now lying low,
Who left his father and mother so long, long ago!
He left them, he left them, but help it how could he?
In Strasburg, in Strasburg, soldiers there must be.
The mother and the sister they sought the captain’s door:
“Ah, captain, dearest captain, let me see my son once more.”
“For gold on gold I cannot give your son to you again,—
Your son,—and he must perish on the broad and distant plain;
On the broad and the distant, the distant field must die,
Where o’er him many a dark-brown maid so mournfully shall sigh.”