Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.
Good Morning
By Ferdinand Freiligrath (18101876)D
As the moon at full the clouds ’gan break;
Far and dazzling white, her lustre flooded
Laach’s monastic walls and tranquil lake.
Leaves and sedges whispered round the strand;
From the flood arose, and beckoned palely,
Fair and slim, the Nun’s mysterious hand.
Rose and fell as heaved the water slow;
Round it, mirrored stars were shining brightly,—
Were they charmed from heaven to shine below?
Shuddering swelled the wave with surging flow;
Lights unearthly through the branches fleeted;
O’er the crossway leapt the frightened roe.
Long attended, and her tears consoled?
O, there seized me then a sore sweet yearning
For the holy fable-world of old!
Had I followed to its magic cell;
But, with force awaked, myself arraying
’Gainst myself, I rose above the spell.
Wood and vale, where Genoveva mourned:
From the scene, with moonlight glancing o’er it,
With one look, my last, I firmly turned.
On the leaves the wildering moonlight lay,
Toward the morning, and my native river;—
From the night to welcome in the day!
Shades and ghosts forsook without a sigh:
Yonder, lo!—in joyous sunlight gleaming,
Deep and broad and green, the Rhine rushed by!
Yes! these shores to life my heart invite;
Nor like those I left, extend to greet me,
Spectral hands, and lifeless fingers white.
From my people’s frank and faithful hands,
That, with reverence due, but never trembling.
By the mark, resolved, for Justice stands.
All of night that on my bosom lay.
To my nation, then, I bade “Good Morning!”
Next, God willing, shall I bid “Good Day!”
With the people, and their cause make mine.
“Poet, march and labor with thy nation!”
Thus I read, to-day, my Schiller’s line.