Herameter zu machen, Die weder hinken noch krachen. Das sind nicht Jedermanns Sachen A. W. Schlege! "Germany's great poets have clothed sublime thoughts in hexameter verse." A. BASKERVILLE, The Poetry of Germany, p. xi. A BOOK OF GERMAN DACTYLIC POETRY ARRANGED AND ANNOTATED BY WILHELM WAGNER, PH. D. PROFESSOR AT THE JOHANNEUM, HAMBURG. London: CAMBRIDGE WAREHOUSE, 17, Paternoster Row. 1878 [All Rights reserved.] PREFACE. HE present collection of German Dactylic Poetry THE is intended to introduce into English schools a number of the more difficult, and, for this reason, hitherto less studied compositions of German poetical literature, beginning with Voss and coming down to the most eminent of our living poets, E. Geibel. It is hoped that this collection-small as it is, but containing nothing but gems-will be appreciated by those whose aims are not confined to merely imparting a certain knowledge of the German language, but who endeavour to instil mental culture of the highest order through the medium of German literature-which may in this respect well measure itself with the intellectual and poetical wealth of ancient Greece. To mention but one poem contained in the present volume, it may be said that those who have once mastered the whole purport of Schiller's 'Spaziergang,' will henceforth keep and cherish it as |