Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.
Nuremberg
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (18071882)I
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;
That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde’s hand;
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian’s praise.
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.
Lived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
Dead he is not, but departed,—for the artist never dies.
That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!
Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains.
Building nests in Fame’s great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.
And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil’s chime;
In the forge’s dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.
And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;
As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master’s antique chair.
Wave these mingled shapes and shadows, like a faded tapestry.
But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler-bard.
As he paced thy streets and courtyards, sang in thought his careless lay:
The nobility of labor,—the long pedigree of toil.