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Translated by C. T. Brooks
I CANNOT take my eyes away | |
| From you, ye busy, bustling band, | |
| Your little all to see you lay, | |
| Each, in the waiting seaman’s hand! | |
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| Ye men, who from your necks set down | 5 |
| The heavy basket, on the earth, | |
| Of bread from German corn, baked brown | |
| By German wives, on German hearth! | |
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| And you, with braided queues so neat, | |
| Black-Forest maidens, slim and brown, | 10 |
| How careful on the sloop’s green seat | |
| You set your pails and pitchers down! | |
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| Ah! oft have home’s cool, shady tanks | |
| These pails and pitchers filled for you: | |
| On far Missouri’s silent banks | 15 |
| Shall these the scenes of home renew:— | |
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| The stone-rimmed fount in village street, | |
| That, as ye stooped, betrayed your smiles; | |
| The hearth and its familiar seat; | |
| The mantel and the pictured tiles. | 20 |
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| Soon, in the far and wooded West, | |
| Shall log-house walls therewith be graced; | |
| Soon many a tired and tawny guest | |
| Shall sweet refreshment from them taste. | |
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| From them shall drink the Cherokee, | 25 |
| Faint with the hot and dusty chase; | |
| No more from German vintage ye | |
| Shall bear them home, in leal-crowned grace. | |
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| Oh, say, why seek ye other lands? | |
| The Neckar’s vale hath wine and corn; | 30 |
| Full of dark firs the Schwarzwald stands; | |
| In Spessart rings the Alp-herd’s horn. | |
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| Ah! in strange forests how ye ’ll yearn | |
| For the green mountains of your home, | |
| To Deutschland’s yellow wheatfields turn, | 35 |
| In spirit o’er her vine-hills roam! | |
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| How will the form of days grown pale | |
| In golden dreams float softly by! | |
| Like some unearthly, mystic tale, | |
| ’T will stand before fond memory’s eye. | 40 |
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| The boatman calls! go hence in peace! | |
| God bless ye, man and wife and sire! | |
| Bless all your fields with rich increase, | |
| And crown each true heart’s pure desire! | |
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