“Hark! hear ye the shouts and the thunders before ye?
On, brothers, on, to death and to glory!
We’ll meet in another, a happier sphere!”
On May 28, 1813, Major Von Lützow determined to set out on an expedition towards Thuringia, with his young cavalry and with Cossacks. Körner begged to accompany him. Lützow commissioned him as an officer. He was wounded, and left for a time helpless in a wood, on the 17th of June. In this condition he wrote his famous “Farewell to Life.”
“My deep wound burns,” &c.
Körner recovered, but was suddenly killed in an engagement on August 26th.
The “Sword Song” of Körner which Von Weber’s music has made famous, was written a few hours before his death. It was an inspiration to the German cause.
“Lützow’s Wild Chase” thrilled Prussia. Like the “Watch on the Rhine” in the recent war, it was the word that fired the national pride, and nerved men to deeds that crowned the cause with glory.
“The Rhine! the Rhine!” shouted the young German heroes at last, looking down on the river.
“Is there a battle?” asked the officers, dashing on in the direction of the shout.
“No, the enemy has gone over the Rhine,” was the answer. “The Rhine! the Rhine!”
Mr. Beal introduced a number of selections from German composers, the loved tone-poets, with interesting stories and anecdotes. We reproduce a part of these musical incidents, as they properly belong to the history of the river of song.