Will'st dou learn de Deutsche Sprache?
Be sholly, brav, und treu,
For dat veller ish kein Deutscher
Who ish not a sholly poy.
Find out vot means Gemutlichkeit,
Und do it mitout fail,
In Sang und Klang dein Lebenlang,[6]
A brick-ganz kreuzfidel.
Willst dou learn de Deutsche Sprache?
If a shendleman dou art,
Denn shtrike right indo Deutschland,
Und get a schveetes heart.
From Schwabenland or Sachsen
Vhere now dis writer pees;
Und de bretty girls all wachsen
Shoost like aepples on de drees.
Boot if dou bee'st a laty,
Denn on de oder hand,
Take a blonde moustachioed lofer
In de vine green Sherman land.
Und if you shoost kit married
(Vood mit vood soon makes a vire),
You'll learn to sprechen Deutsch mein kind,
Ash fast ash you tesire.
Dresden, January 1870.
LOVE SONG
Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea sponsa.
O VERE mine lofe a sugar-powl,
De fery shmallest loomp
Vouldt shveet de seas, from pole to pole,
Und make de shildren shoomp.
Und if she vere a clofer-field,
I'd bet my only pence,
It vouldn't pe no dime at all
Pefore I'd shoomp de fence.
Her heafenly foice, it drill me so,
It oft-dimes seems to hoort,
She ish de holiest anamile
Dat roons oopon de dirt.
De renpow rises vhen she sings,
De sonnshine vhen she dalk;
De angels crow und flop deir vings
Vhen she goes out to valk.
So livin white, so carnadine,
Mine lofe's gomblexion show;
It's shoost like Abendcarmosine,
Rich gleamin on de shnow.
Her soul makes plushes in her sheek
Ash sommer reds de wein,
Or sonnlight sends a fire life troo
An blank Karfunkelstein.
De uberschwengliche idees
Dis lofe poot in my mind,
Vouldt make a foost-rate philosoph
Of any human kind.
'Tis schudderin schveet on eart to meet
An himmlisch-hoellisch Qual;
Und treat mitwhiles to Kummel Schnapps
De schoenheitsideal.