Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79.
The Tomb of Charlemagne
By Bayard Taylor (18251878)I
That from the clustered roofs of Aix lifts up its mouldering tower,
And, like a legend strange and rude, speaks of an earlier day,—
Of saint and knight, the tourney’s pomp, and the Minnesinger’s lay!
And through the chancel-oriel came a splendor soft and dim,
Till dusky shrine and painting old glowed in the lustre wan:
Below me was a marble slab,—the tomb of Charlemagne.
It seemed a requiem thundered o’er the dead who slept below;
And with the sound came thronging round the stern men of that time,
When best was he who bravest fought, and cowardice was crime.
Ruled with a monarch’s boundless right the kingdoms he had won,—
When rose the broad Alps in his realm, and roared the Baltic’s wave;
And now—the lowest serf might stand, unheeded, on his grave.
The crown upon his crumbled brows, and Joyeuse by his side,—
Whose rusted blade, at Ronçeval, flamed in the hero’s hand
In answer to the silver horn of the Paladin, Rolánd.
While bowed at many a holier shrine the worshippers around,—
And through the cloud of incense-smoke burned many a taper dim,
And priestly stoles went sweeping by,—I could but think of him!
The emperor in his purple cloak, the lord of all the Rhine;
The conqueror of a thousand foes, in battle stern and hard;
The widowed mourner at thy tomb, O fairest Hildegarde!
As, lost in those old memories, I stood upon his grave;
And when the morning anthem ceased, and solemn mass began,
I left that minster gray and old,—the tomb of Charlemagne!