“Before the Consul they carried an axe
“In Rome of old, let me remind thee
“And thou hast also thy lictor, but he
“Now carries the axe behind thee.
“Thy lictor am I, and follow behind,
“And carry in all its splendour
“The polish’d executioner’s axe—
“I’m the deed which thy thoughts engender.”
CAPUT VII.
I homeward went, and as soundly I slept
As if by the angels tended;
In German beds one cosily rests,
For they are all featherbeds splendid.
How often I’ve yearn’d for the sweet repose
Of my own native country’s pillows,
While I lay on hard mattresses, sleepless all night,
In my exile far over the billows!
One sleeps so well, and one dreams so well
In our featherbeds delicious;
The German spirit here feels itself free
From all earth’s fetters pernicious.
It feels itself free, and upward soars
To the highest regions Elysian;
O German Spirit, how proud is the flight
Thou takest in nightly vision!
The gods turn pale, when thou drawest nigh;
When soaring tow’rds heaven’s dominions,
Thou hast snuff’d out the light of many a star,
With the strokes of thine eager pinions.
The land belongs to the Russians and French,
In the British the ocean is vested,
But we in dream’s airy regions possess
The mastery uncontested.
The art of ruling practise we here,
And here we are never dissever’d,
While other nations on earth’s flat face
To develop themselves have endeavour’d.—