KÖRNER AND HIS SISTER.
[“Charles Theodore Körner, the celebrated young German poet and soldier, was killed in a skirmish with a detachment of French troops on the 20th of August 1813, a few hours after the composition of his popular piece, The Sword-Song. He was buried at the village of Wöbbelin in Mecklenburg, under a beautiful oak, in a recess of which he had frequently deposited verses composed by him while campaigning in its vicinity. The monument erected to his memory is of cast-iron; and the upper part is wrought into a lyre and sword, a favourite emblem of Körner’s, from which one of his works had been entitled. Near the grave of the poet is that of his only sister, who died of grief for his loss, having only survived him long enough to complete his portrait and a drawing of his burial-place. Over the gate of the cemetery is engraved one of his own lines:—
‘Vergiss die treuen Todten nicht.’
(Forget not the faithful dead.)”
—See Richardson’s Translation of Körner’s Life and Works, and Downe’s Letters from Mecklenburg.]
Green wave the oak for ever o’er thy rest,
Thou that beneath its crowning foliage sleepest,
And, in the stillness of thy country’s breast,
Thy place of memory as an altar keepest;
Brightly thy spirit o’er her hills was pour’d,
Thou of the Lyre and Sword!
Rest, bard! rest, soldier! By the father’s hand
Here shall the child of after years be led,
With his wreath-offering silently to stand
In the hush’d presence of the glorious dead—
Soldier and bard! for thou thy path hast trod
With freedom and with God.
The oak waved proudly o’er thy burial rite,
On thy crown’d bier to slumber warriors bore thee,
And with true hearts thy brethren of the fight
Wept as they veil’d their drooping banners o’er thee;
And the deep guns with rolling peal gave token
That Lyre and Sword were broken.
Thou hast a hero’s tomb: a lowlier bed
Is hers, the gentle girl beside thee lying—
The gentle girl that bow’d her fair young head
When thou wert gone, in silent sorrow dying.
Brother, true friend! the tender and the brave!—
She pined to share thy grave.
Fame was thy gift from others;—but for her,
To whom the wide world held that only spot,
She loved thee!—lovely in your lives ye were,
And in your early deaths divided not.
Thou hast thine oak, thy trophy,—what hath she?
Her own bless’d place by thee!
It was thy spirit, brother! which had made
The bright earth glorious to her youthful eye,
Since first in childhood midst the vines ye play’d,
And sent glad singing through the free blue sky.
Ye were but two—and when that spirit pass’d,
Woe to the one, the last!
Woe, yet not long! She linger’d but to trace
Thine image from the image in her breast—
Once, once again to see that buried face
But smile upon her, ere she went to rest.
Too sad a smile! its living light was o’er—
It answer’d hers no more.
The earth grew silent when thy voice departed,
The home too lonely whence thy step had fled;
What then was left for her the faithful-hearted?
Death, death, to still the yearning for the dead!
Softly she perish’d: be the Flower deplored
Here with the Lyre and Sword!
Have ye not met ere now?—so let those trust
That meet for moments but to part for years—
That weep, watch, pray, to hold back dust from dust—
That love, where love is but a fount of tears.
Brother! sweet sister! peace around ye dwell:
Lyre, Sword, and Flower, farewell![355]
[355] The following lines, addressed to the author of the above, by the venerable father of Körner, who, with the mother, survived the “Lyre, Sword, and Flower,” here commemorated, may not be uninteresting to the German reader:—
“Wohllaut tont aus der Ferne von freundlichen Luften getragen,
Schmeichelt mit lindernder Kraft sich in der Trauernden Ohr,
Starkt den erhebenden Glauben an solcher seelen Verwandschaft,
Die zum Tempel die brust nur fur das Wurdige weihn.
Aus dem Lande zu dem sich stets der gefeyerte Jungling
Hingezogen gefuhlt, wird ihm ein glazender Lohn.
Heil dem Brittischen Volke, wenn ihm das Deutsche nicht fremd ist!
Uber Lander und Meer reichen sich beyde die Hand.”
Theodor Körner’s Vater.
THE DEATH-DAY OF KÖRNER.[356]
A song for the death-day of the brave—
A song of pride!
The youth went down to a hero’s grave,
With the sword, his bride.[357]
He went, with his noble heart unworn,
And pure, and high—
An eagle stooping from clouds of morn,
Only to die.
He went with the lyre, whose lofty tone
Beneath his hand
Had thrill’d to the name of his God alone
And his fatherland.
And with all his glorious feelings yet
In their first glow,
Like a southern stream that no frost hath met
To chain its flow.
A song for the death-day of the brave—
A song of pride!
For him that went to a hero’s grave,
With the sword, his bride.
He hath left a voice in his trumpet lays
To turn the flight,
And a guiding spirit for after days,
Like a watch-fire’s light.
And a grief in his father’s soul to rest,
Midst all high thought;
And a memory unto his mother’s breast,
With healing fraught.
And a name and fame above the blight
Of earthly breath,
Beautiful—beautiful and bright,
In life and death!
A song for the death-day of the brave—
A song of pride!
For him that went to a hero’s grave,
With the sword, his bride!
[356] On reading part of a letter from Körner’s father, addressed to Mr Richardson, the translator of his works, in which he speaks of “The Death-day of his son.”
[357] See The Sword Song, composed on the morning of his death.
[As the great German writers at this time, and ever afterwards, exerted a great influence over the mind of Mrs Hemans, it may please the reader to know, on the authority of her sister, the degrees of estimation in which she held some of these. We quote from the Memoir, p. 54-8.
“She in general preferred the writings of Schiller to those of Goethe, and could for ever find fresh beauties in Wallenstein, with which she was equally familiar in its eloquent original, and in Coleridge’s magnificent translation, or, as it may truly be called, transfusion. Those most conversant with her literary tastes, will remember her almost actual relation-like love for the characters of Max and Thekla, whom, like many other ‘beings of the mind,’ she had learned to consider as friends; and her constant quotations of certain passages from this noble tragedy, which peculiarly accorded with her own views and feelings. In the Stimmen der Völker in Lieder of Herder, she found a rich store of thoughts and suggestions; and it was this work which inspired her with the idea of her own ‘Lays of Many Lands,’ most of which appeared originally in the New Monthly Magazine, then edited by Mr Campbell. She also took great delight in the dreamy beauties of Novalis and Tieck, and in what has been gracefully characterised by Mr Chorley, as the ‘moonlight tenderness’ of Oehlenschläger. Of the works of the latter, her especial favourite was Coreggio; and of Tieck, Sternbald’s Wanderungen, which she often made her out-of-doors companion. It was always an especial mark of her love for a book, and of her considering it true to nature, and to the best wisdom of the heart,[358] when she promoted it to the list of those with which she would ‘take sweet counsel’ amidst the woods and fields.
“But, amongst all these names of power, none awakened a more lively interest in her mind, than that of the noble-hearted Körner, the young soldier-bard, who, in the words of Professor Bouterwek, ‘would have become a distinguished tragic poet, had he not met with the still more glorious fate of falling on the field of battle, while fighting for the deliverance of Germany.’ The stirring events of his life, the heroism of his early death, and the beautiful tie which subsisted between him and his only sister, whose fate was so touchingly bound up with his own, formed a romance of real life which could not fail to excite feelings of the warmest enthusiasm in a bosom so ready as hers to respond to all things high and holy. The lyric of ‘The Grave of Körner,’ is, perhaps, one of the most impressive Mrs Hemans ever wrote. Her whole heart was in a subject which so peculiarly combined the two strains dearest to her nature, the chivalrous and the tender.
‘They were but two—and when that spirit pass’d,
Woe to the one, the last!’
“That mournful echo—‘They were but two,’ was, by some indefinable association, connected in her mind with another and far differing brother and sister, called into existence by the magic pen of Sir Walter Scott. The affecting ejaculation, ‘There are but two of us!’ so often repeated by the hapless Clara Mowbray in St Ronan’s Well, was frequently quoted by Mrs Hemans as an instance of the deepest pathos. The lyric in question was, it is believed, one of the first tributes which appeared in England to the memory of the author of ‘The Lyre and Sword,’ though his name has since become ‘familiar in our ears as household words.’ A translation of the ‘Life of Körner,’ with selections from his poems, &c., was published in 1827, by G. F. Richardson, Esq., whose politeness in presenting a copy of the work to Mrs Hemans, inscribed with a dedicatory sonnet, led to an interchange of letters with that gentleman, and was further the means of procuring for her the high gratification of a direct message, full of the most feeling acknowledgment, from the venerable father of the hero, who afterwards addressed to her a poetical tribute from Theodor Körner’s Father [see p. 425.] Her pleasure in receiving this genuine offering was thus expressed to Mr Richardson, who had been the medium through which it reached her. ‘Theodor Körner’s Vater!’—it is, indeed, a title beautifully expressing all the holy pride which the memory of die treuen Todten[359] must inspire; and awakening every good and high feeling to its sound. I shall prize the lines as a relic. Will you be kind enough to assure M. Körner, with my grateful respects, of the value which will be attached to them, a value so greatly enhanced by their being in his own hand. They are very beautiful, I think, in their somewhat antique and treuherzig[360] simplicity, and worthy to have proceeded from Theodor Körner’s Vater.
“The following almost literal translation of these lines is given by W. B. Chorley, Esq., in his interesting little volume, ‘The Lyre and Sword,’ published in 1834:—
‘Gently a voice from afar is borne to the ear of the mourner;
Mildly it soundeth, yet strong, grief in his bosom to soothe;
Strong in the soul-cheering faith, that hearts have a share in his sorrow,
In whose depths all things holy and noble are shrined.
From that land once dearly beloved by our brave one, the fallen,
Mourning blent with bright fame—cometh a wreath for his urn.
Hail to thee, England the free! thou see’st in the German no stranger.
Over the earth and the seas, join’d be both lands, heart and hand!’
“There was nothing which delighted Mrs Hemans more in German literature, than the cordial feeling of brotherhood, so conspicuous amongst its most eminent authors, and their freedom from all the petty rivalries and manœuvres on which she herself looked down with as much of wonder as of contempt. In a letter, in which she speaks of the bitterness, and jealousy, and strife, pervading the tone of many of our own Reviews, she adds, turning to a brighter picture with a feeling of relief, like that of one emerging from the heated atmosphere of a city to breathe the fresh air of the mountains:—‘How very different seems the spirit of literary men in Germany! I am just reading a work of Tieck’s, which is dedicated to Schlegel; and I am delighted with the beautiful simplicity of these words in the dedication:—Es war eine schöne Zeit meines Lebens, als ich dich und deinen Bruder Friedrich zuerst kennen lernte’; eine noch schönere als wir und Novalis für Kunst und Wissenschaft vereinigt lebten, und uns in mannigfaltigen Bestrebungen begegneten. Jetzt hat uns das Schicksal schon seit vielen Jahren getrennt. Ich kann nur in Geist und in der Erinnerung mit dir leben.[361] ‘Is not that union of bright minds, für Kunst und Wissenschaft, a picture on which it is delightful to repose?’”]
[358] “One of our poets says, with equal truth and beauty, ‘The heart is wise.’ We should be not only happier but better if we attended more to its dictates.”—Ethel Churchill, by L. E. L. vol. i. p. 234.
[359] The faithful dead.
[360] True-hearted.
[361] “That was a bright era in my life when I first learned to know you and your brother Frederick; a still brighter, when we and Novalis lived united for art and knowledge, and emulated one another in various competitions. Fate has since, for many years, divided us. I can now live with you only in spirit and in memory.”