| |
(A.D. 1494)
“WHY should they crown me Emperor? Why | |
| Summon me hither from merry cheer | |
| With my life-long wassailers? Surely I, | |
| Prince of good fellows, am happier here. | |
| I smother to think of the cramping weight | 5 |
| Of Charlemagne’s iron about my brow: | |
| My own Bohemia’s crown and state | |
| Are more than enough for me, I vow, | |
| When I ’d cast off care, and drink my full | |
| Of wine and wit at the Königstuhl. | 10 |
| |
| “I wonder if Charlemagne ever drank | |
| A tankard of Assmanshausen? Nay, | |
| If he had, his empire never would rank | |
| As it does with the royalest realms to-day. | |
| For the goddess that laughs within the cup | 15 |
| Had wiled and won him from blood and war, | |
| And shown, as he drained her long draughts up, | |
| There was something better worth living for | |
| Than kingcraft, keeping his gruff brow sad; | |
| (—I wish from my very soul she had!) | 20 |
| |
| “Consider now, Rupert! With such a realm | |
| As that to govern from year to year; | |
| The brain must be steady that holds the helm, | |
| The senses alert and quick and clear. | |
| And how could I dare to jest and drink, | 25 |
| Till brain grew dizzy and sense a wrack? | |
| For I never would be the man, I think, | |
| To shirk the burden once on my back: | |
| But what ’s an Imperial name, I pray, | |
| To the madness of drinking the soul away? | 30 |
| |
| “This Assmanshausen! Why, I declare, | |
| There never was such heart-staying wine, | |
| So brimmed with the sky, the sun, the air, | |
| Vintaged along our lordly Rhine—” | |
| “I challenge thy word,” Prince Rupert said; | 35 |
| “I know a better by sevenfold, | |
| With a century’s warp of cobwebs spread | |
| Over the barrels mossed and old. | |
| He never has been to heaven and back, | |
| Who has not drunken of Bacharach.” | 40 |
| |
| “Now, by my sceptre,” roared the king, | |
| “Fetch me the wine thus held so high, | |
| And if it can twice the rapture bring, | |
| That slumbers in Assmanshausen,—why, | |
| Here on the spot I ’ll lay thee down, | 45 |
| (Inly thou cravest it now, I trow,) | |
| Plighted and pledged, the Iron crown: | |
| Hasten!—a flagon!—let me know | |
| At once if this Bacharach can be | |
| More than an Emperor’s state to me.” | 50 |
| |
| The wine was brought him,—the bowls were filled, | |
| And they drank deep into the winter night, | |
| Till the heart of the new-made Emperor thrilled, | |
| And tingled with such divine delight, | |
| That he cried: “Prince Rupert, if thou wilt give | 55 |
| Three butts a year of Bacharach wine, | |
| Just such as this, through the years I live, | |
| Then Charlemagne’s sceptre shall be thine.” | |
| Prince Rupert sware: For his royal guest, | |
| Freedom and Bacharach wine were best. | 60 |
| |
