The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (A Selection)
broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains,
Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.
Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint
old town of art and song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like
the rooks that round them throng:
Memories of the Middle Ages, when the
emperors, rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-
defying, centuries old;
And thy brave and thrifty burghers boast-
ed, in their uncouth rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretched
its hand through every clime.
In the court-yard of the castle, bound
with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden planted by
Queen Cunigunde's hand;
On the square the oriel window, where
in old heroic days
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser
Maximilian's praise.
Everywhere I see around me rise the
wondrous world of Art:
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture
standing in the common mart;
And above cathedral doorways saints and
bishops carved in stone,
By a former age commissioned as apostles
to our own.
In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps
enshrined his holy dust,
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard
from age to age their trust:
In the church of sainted Lawrence stands
a pix of sculptures rare,
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising
through the painted air.
Here, when Art was still religion, with a
simple, reverent heart,
Lived and labored Albrecht Durer, the
Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling
still with busy hand,
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking
for the Better Land.
Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-
stone where he lies;
Dead he is not, but departed, --- for the
artist never dies.
Fairer seems the ancient city, and the
sunshine seems more fair,
That he once has trod its pavement, that
he once has breathed its air!
Through these streets so broad and stately,
these obscure and dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chant-
ing rude poetic strains.
From remote and sunless suburbs came
they to the friendly guild,
Building nests in Fame's great temple,
as in spouts the swallows build.
As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he
too the mystic rhyme,
And the smith his iron measures ham-
mered to the anvil's chime;
Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom
makes the flowers of poesy bloom
In the forge's dust and cinders, in the
tissues of the loom.
Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, lau-
reate of the gentle craft,
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in
huge folios sang and laughed.
But his house is now an ale-house, with
a nicely sanded floor,
And a garland in the window, and his
face above the door;
Painted by some humble artist, as in
Adam Puschman's song,
As the old man gray and dove-like, with
his great beard white and long.
And at night the swart mechanic comes
to drown his cark and care,
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in
the master's antique chair.
Vanished is the ancient splendor, and
before my dreamy eye
Wave these mingled shapes and figures,
like a faded tapestry.
Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win
for thee the world's regard;
But thy painter, Albrecht Durer, and
Hans Sachs thy cobbler-bard.
Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a
region far away,
As he paced thy streets and court-yards,
sang in thought his careless lay:
Gathering from the pavement's crevice,
as a floweret of the soil,
The nobility of labor, --- the long pedigree
of toil.
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