Friedrich Rückert

Artist and Public

THE dumb man asked the blind man:
"Canst do a favor, pray?
Could I the harper find, man?
Hast seen him pass to-day?
I take, myself, small pleasure
In harp-tones-almost none-
Yet much I'd like a measure
Played for my deaf young son."

The blind man quick made answer: "I saw him pass my gate; I'll send my lame young man, sir,

To overtake him straight." At one look from his master, Away the cripple ran,

And faster, ever faster,

He chased the harper-man.

The harper came, elated,

And straight to work he went;

His arms were amputated;

His toes to work he bent.

All hearts his playing captured;

The deaf man was all ear;

The blind man gazed, enraptured; The dumb man shouted, "Hear!"

The lame boy fell to dancing,

And leaped with all his might; The scene was so entrancing,

They stayed till late at night. And when the concert ended, The public, justly proud, The artist's powers commended, Who, deeply grateful, bowed.

August Kopisch

The Great Crab of Lake Mohrin

IN the town of Mohrin they never sleep,
But day and night in the lake they peep;
May no good Christian e'er live to see
The day when the monstrous crab gets free!
He's fastened in the lake there

With fetters down below,
Else would he work the country
A dreadful, dreadful wo!

The creature's miles in length, they say,
And oft turns over, and wo's the day
When once he gets loose-yes, once on land,
No power that can his march withstand!
For, as advancing backward

'S the way with crabs, you know,

Why backward, willy-nilly,

All things with him must go.

Such going backward that will be!

The meat you put in your mouth-d'ye see?—

Will not stay there, but straightway trot

Back to the plate, and then to the pot.

The bread will turn to wheat again,

The meal will turn to corn,

And everything will be just what
It was before 'twas born.

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The timber from the house'll get free,

Go back to the woods, a rustling tree;

The tree will creep back to a shoot as of yore;
The mortar will turn to lime once more.

The ox will be a calf again,

The calf go back to the cow,
And the cow again, in her turn,
Be what the calf is now.

Back to the flower will go the wax;
The shirt being worn will turn to flax,
The flax to linseed change, and then
Under the ground be buried again.
And then the city's mayor
Will alter quite, they say;
The people all shall see him
A sucking babe that day;

And after him the aldermen,
And all the magnificent copyists then;
And the corporation stripped shall be

Of its corporate capacity.

The master on the school-bench

Will sit, a scholar small

In short, the world grow back
To children, one and all.

All shall return to earth's green sod,
And each, with Adam, be a clod.
The feathered folk will longest exist,
And then, like the rest, will cease to resist.

The hen will be a chicken,

And into the egg crawl back,
Which the great crab instanter

With his long tail will crack.

Heaven grant we never so far may get!
The world is living and thriving yet;

Good care is observed by the powers that be
That the exiled old crab shall never be free.

Just think how my poor ditty

Would come to a wretched fate,

Drawn through Fame's trumpet's mouthpiece,
Back to the inkhorn straight!