THE SINGER’S CURSE.
In days of old a castle stood, it stood so haught and high,
Wide o’er the lands it shone to where the blue sea met the sky;
All round it lush flower-gardens a perfumed girdle made,
Wherein with radiance rainbow-arched reviving fountains played.
Sat there a proud king rich in spoil of war and rich in land,
Upon his ancient throne he sat so gaunt and grimly grand;
For all he thinks is Terror, and all he looks is Hate,
And all he speaks is Scourging, and all he writes is Fate.
Once did a noble minstrel pair up to this castle go,
The one with golden ringlets, the other with locks of snow;
The old man with the harp he sat on a goodly steed astride,
The while his blooming comrade tript gaily at his side.
Spake to the youth the old man, “My son, be strong to-day;
Our deepest songs remember, attune thy fullest lay;
Knit all the nerves of music, the joy, the pain, in one;
Our task it is to-day to touch the tyrant’s heart of stone.”
Now stand the singers twain within the lofty pillared house,
And high upon his throne the king sits with his royal spouse;
The king so fiercely splendid, like blood-red northern light,
But sweet and mild the queen as looks the full moon on the night.
Then smote the strings the old man right wondrously and well,
That full and fuller on the ear the tides of music swell;
And then angelically clear the young man’s voice did flow
In the elder’s pauses, like a choir of spirits, weird and low.
They sing of spring and true love, of an age of golden youth,
Of freedom and of manhood, of holiness and truth;
They sing of every sweetness that makes man’s bosom soft,
They sing of every greatness that bears man’s heart aloft.
Forthwith the courtier circle unlearns the courtly sneer,
The king’s disdainful warriors bow down to God and fear.
Then, as her soul with tender pain and rapture overflows,
The queen before the singers from her bosom flings the rose.
“Ye have beguiled my people—will ye bring my wife to shame?”
So cries the king in fury, quivering through all his frame;
He hurls his sword, that flashing strikes through the stripling’s heart;
Now from the source of golden songs a blood-jet high doth start.
Strewn as by sudden tempest is all the listening swarm,
The youth hath sobbed his life out upon his master’s arm;
Upon his horse he sets him, wound in his mantle’s fold,
And fastly binds him upright, and quits with him the hold.
But at the high gate halting, the old man stands sublime,
His harp he seizes wildly, of harps the peerless prime;
Against a marble column he hath dashed its strength in twain,
Then cries aloud that garden and castle peal amain.
“Woe, woe to you, proud halls, no more echo melodious word
Through all your vaulted hollows, nor ever song or chord;
No, moans alone and wailing, and coward step of slaves,
Till sprites of vengeance trample you to dust and mould of graves.
“Woe to you, odorous gardens, in May-tide’s lovely light,
As ye behold this dead face, so sadly changed to sight;
Even so untimely wither, with every fountain dry,
And naked all and turned to stone through coming ages lie.
“Woe to thee, murderer accurst, of minstrel-craft the bane,
For crowns of savage glory strive on, and strive in vain;
And be thy name forgotten, in endless midnight sunk,
And pass as into vain air that last death-rattle shrunk.”
The old man’s voice hath pealed it, and Heaven hath heard on high;
The mighty walls are levelled, the halls in ruin lie;
One pillar lone and lofty still tells of vanished power;
Ev’n that is cloven, and may fall before the morning hour.
Around for perfumed gardens is a heath of desert land,
No tree sheds welcome shadow, no spring leaps in the sand.
That king he perished all unnamed in hero-scroll or verse,
Forgotten, blindly overwhelmed!—so wrought the singer’s curse.
Shortly before his death Uhland wrote a little epigram on the death of a young child, which it would be inexcusable to attempt to give in any other language than the original, especially as it has not yet appeared in any collected edition of his works.