For even now some curious glamour
Has brought about a misty change!
Things look, as in a moonlight dream, or
Magician’s mirror, quaint and strange.
Some weird, phantasmagoric notion
Impels us backward many a year,
And far across the northern ocean,
To Fatherlands of Lager Bier.
As odd a throng I see before us
As ever haunted Brocken’s height,