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he is said to have been thrown from the bridge into the river Moldau, on which Prague is situated. Nepomuk is now considered the patron saint of Prague.

19. Getümmel, 'stir, turmoil,'

22.

Deutschen.

The sense is evidently intended to be zu dem Rathe der alten

23. Staat is used in the same way as state in poetical English. Charlemagne is conceived as presiding in state over the heavenly council of genuine old Germany.

26. Zeitung Nachricht, comp. tidings.

29. Sühnungswunden is a word probably coined by our poet; it would be more usual to say die Sühnwunde.

33. The common alliance of all German tribes against Napoleon should strive to transform Scharnhorst's word into actual truth and deed. The present poem was composed anterior to the battle of Leipzig, in which the liberty of Germany was finally asserted against the French.

34. Scharnhorst had been very active in the re-organisation of the Prussian army, which formed the surest guarantee of victory.

37. Bergesforst, a compound easily understood, is not registered in Grimm.

42.

Does the poet mean to connect the name of Scharnhorst with the verb horsten and the noun Aar, which is often used in poetry as a synonym of Adler? The idea is certainly very far-fetched.

45. dem Volke is dativus commodi, in the sense of für das Volk,

XXXIX.

A pithy little poem expressive of Blücher's bluntness and quickness of decision. Many of the leaders of the allied armies hesitated whether it would be advisable to cross the Rhine and pursue the flying enemy into France, but Blücher's vote carried the day, and he was the first to cross, in the night of new year's day, 1814.

5.

A short command instead of gebt mir die Generalkarte her!

7. Dahier may be compared with allhier, 34, 39.

8. Den Finger drauf, here and line 10, contains an admonition to mark the enemy's position by pointing out the place in the map.

13. It would be more usual to add ta before the relative sentence.

XL.

We have thought fit to include in our collection this fine poem, which attained to such great celebrity in the late memorable war. It was written thirty years before 1870, but became famous in that year,

when the enthusiasm of the whole German nation was excited to its greatest pitch. The poet himself had long been dead when his song resounded from one end of Germany to the other.

2.

Wogenprall, the dash of waves (against a rocky shore).

7. zucken is the expression used of the electric spark which thrills through the body. See 26, 82.

IO. Mark is the old appellation of the boundary district, like the English marches. Hence Markgraf, marquis.

13. Das Blauen des Himmels is a poetical expression instead of the ordinary der blaue Himmel.

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20. Wälscher: comp. 36, 12.—' -These lines are addressed to the river Rhine, which the French poet Alfred de Musset had claimed as belonging to his nation by right of conquest:

Nous l'avons eu, votre Rhin allemand

Son sein porte une plaie ouverte,

Du jour où Condé triomphant

A déchiré sa robe verte.

Où le père a passé, passera bien l'enfant.

31. rinnt='runs' in its original meaning. In modern German rinnen is to trickle, to flow gently.

XLI.

By the battles fought around Metz on the 14th, 16th, and 18th of August, 1870 (commonly called the battle of Gravelotte, where the last fight on the 18th took place), the French under Bazaine were beaten and thrown back into the fortress of Metz.

4. The epithet männermordend is Homeric; in Homer it is employed of the god of war, Ares.

9. The smoke of the repeated discharges of artillery hovered like a thick fog over the field of battle.

IO. übersatt, more than sated, surfeited. The genitive after satt is poetical; in prose the prepositions von and mit are more commonly used with this adj.

13. Death is represented as a mere skeleton of bones, without flesh and skin.

15. Das Gestirn des Tages is the sun.

16. Zur Rüste gehen is an archaic and poetical expression identical in sense with the ordinary zur Ruhe or zur Raft gehen. Die Firne der Berge, the tops of the mountains. Originally Firn or Firne denotes the nevermelting snow of the highest mountains in the Alps.

19. The preposition an expresses approximate estimation; ‘about.' 21. For the adj. unabsehbar see our note on Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea, I, 107.

22. 'A gaping sepulchre of nations.'

23. Sternenzelt is an expression like Himmelszelt, 8, 12.

29. The poet is, as it were, present on the field of battle, amid the heaps of slain. Ihr treuen Todten, see Aue § 175, 3.

42 sq. The allusion is to Prometheus, who was chained to the Caucasus by the command of Jupiter.

44. baar, with the genitive, is poetical, in the sense of 'deprived,' beraubt.

45. It is more common to use the reflective of this verb, fich aufbäumend.

45. The eagle is well known as the armorial emblem of Germany. Prometheus' liver was torn and devoured by an eagle, while he himself was chained to the rock.

51. In prose: in ununterbrochenem Zuge.

55. Observe the heavy sound of the compound, Sturmmarschtritt, which resembles the heavy tramp of an army marching in time.

XLII.

King William of Prussia, born on 22nd March, 1797, succeeded his brother, Frederick William IV., on 2nd Jan., 1861, and was proclaimed German Emperor on 18th Jan., 1871. This proclamation took place at Versailles, in the palace erected by Louis XIV.

2. This line and the one preceding it are an imitation of the opening lines of Bürger's famous Lied vom braven Manne:

Hoch klingt das Lied vom braven Mann,

Wie Orgelton und Glockenklang.

9. See no. 14 in the present collection, together with our introductory note. The expression Rabenbrut, in v. 11, is likewise explained by this reference.

16. der Einheit Eiche, the oak, emblem of German strength and unity. The usual form is hochgemuth.

26.

27.

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33—40 have been most obligingly rewritten by the poet, expressly for the present collection. What he had in 1871 expressed in the form of a wish has meanwhile, to a certain degree, been fulfilled, and the auspicious reign of the first German Emperor of the House of Hohenzollern has already been productive of a large amount of the blessings enumerated in these lines!

NOTES ON THE AUTHORS OF THE POEMS UNITED IN THE PRESENT COLLECTION.

ARNDT (Ernst Moritz), born at Schoritz in the Isle of Rügen, 26th Dec. 1769, one of the foremost patriots in the wars of 1813 and 1814, subsequently professor at the University of Bonn, where he died 29th Jan. 1860. [33, 36.]

BAUR (Karl), born at Darmstadt in 1788, professor at the College of his native town.

[4]

BESSER (Hermann), born at Zeitz in 1807, lives at Potsdam in the position of Regierungs-Assessor. [30.]

CHAMISSO (Adalbert von), by birth a Frenchman, whose original name was Louis Charles Adelaide de Chamisso de Boncourt, born in the castle of Boncourt in Champagne, 27th Jan. 1781, was driven out of his native country by the revolution and became a thorough German. Died at Berlin, 21st Aug. 1838. [12.]

CURTMANN (Wilhelm Jacob), born at Alsfeld in Hessia, 3rd March, 1802, headmaster at Worms. [31.]

DOHM (E.), author of various poems, lives in Berlin as editor of the Kladderadatsch (the German Punch).

[41.]

ELZE (Karl), one of the foremost Shakespeare-critics in Germany, formerly at Dessau, now professor of English literature at the University of Halle. [42.]

FONTANE (Theodor), born at Neu-Ruppin, 30th Dec. 1819, studied Natural Philosophy at Berlin, then lived at Leipzig and Dresden, spent four years in London, and returned to Berlin in 1859, where he lives now as secretary to the Academy. [32.]

FREILIGRATH (Ferdinand), born at Detmold, 17th June, 1810, originally merchant, lived in London 1851–1868, when he returned to Germany. He died at Cannstatt 18th March 1876. [28.]

GRUN (Anastasius) is the nom de plume of the Austrian Count Anton Alexander Maria Auersperg, born at Laibach in Krain 11th April 1806, died at Graz 12th Sept. 1876. [22.]

GÜNTHER (Karl Friedrich), born at Altenburg in 1807. He holds the dignity of Diaconus in his native town. [26.]

HAGENBACH (Karl Rudolf), born at Basle 4th May 1801, professor of theology at the University of his native town. [23, 24]

KERNER (Justinus), born at Ludwigsburg, 18th Sept. 1786, physician at Weinsberg, where he died 22nd Feb. 1862. [18, 21.]

KOPISCH (August), born at Breslau 26th May 1799, lived as painter at Berlin, where he died 6th Feb. 1853. [3, 39.]

KÖRNER (Theodor), born at Dresden 31st Sept. 1791, joined

Lützow's corps, and fell in a skirmish near Gadebusch in Mecklenburg,

26th August 1813. [37.]

MENZEL (Wolfgang), born at Waldenburg in Silesia 21st June 1798, died at Stuttgart 23rd April 1873. [19.]

MINDING (Julius), born at Breslau 8th Nov. 1808, studied medicine, and terminated his life by committing suicide, in New York, 7th Sept. 1850. [27.]

MOSEN (Julius), born in Voigtland (Saxony) 8th July 1803, was first solicitor at Dresden, and accepted in 1844 the appointment of manager to the Grand-Ducal Theatre at Oldenburg, from which position he retired in 1848, on account of impaired health. He died 10th Oct. 1867. [34, 35-1

MÜHLER (Heinrich von), born 4th Nov. 1812, sometime Prussian minister of Instruction, died at Potsdam in 1874. [9.]

PLATEN (August, Graf von P.-Hallermünde), born at Ansbach, 24th Oct. 1796, died at Syracuse, 5th Dec. 1835. [1, 6, 10, 25.]

RUCKERT (Friedrich), born at Schweinfurt, 16th May 1789, professor at Erlangen (1826) and subsequently at Berlin (1841), concluded his life on his estate near Coburg, 31st Jan. 1866. [14.]

SCHENKENDORF (Max von), born at Tilsit 11th Dec. 1783, died at Coblenz on the Rhine 1817, on his birthday. [38.]

SCHILLER (Friedrich von), born at Marbach, 10th Nov. 1759, died at Weimar, 9th May 1805. [17.]

SCHNECKENBURGER (Max), born at Thalheim near Tuttlingen in the kingdom of Würtemberg, 27th Feb. 1819, owner of an ironfoundry at Burgdorf in Switzerland, where he died in the flower of his age in 1849. [40.]

SCHWAB (Gustav), born at Stuttgart, 19th June 1792, professor of classical literature at the College of his native town until 1837, then pastor at Gomaringen near Tübingen, 1841 pastor at St Leonard's Church, Stuttgart, died there 3rd Nov. 1850. [11.]

SIMROCK (Karl), born at Bonn 28th Aug. 1802, professor of German literature at the University of Bonn, where he died 18th July 1876. [2.] STOLTERFOTH (Adelheid von), baroness of Zwierlein, born at Eisenach 11th Sept. 1800, died in 1875.

[7.]

UHLAND (Johann Ludwig), born at Tübingen 26th April 1787, died there 13th Nov. 1862. [5, 13, 15, 20.]

VOGL (Johann Nepomuck), born at Vienna in 1802, died there 16th Nov. 1866.

[8.]

ZIMMERMANN (B. F.Wilhelm), born at Stuttgart 2nd Jan. 1807, professor at the College of his native town. [16.]

CAMBRIDGE: PRINTED BY C. J. CLAY, M.A. AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

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