Woe to the one, the last!’
“That mournful echo—‘They were but two,’ was, by some indefinable association, connected in her mind with another and far differing brother and sister, called into existence by the magic pen of Sir Walter Scott. The affecting ejaculation, ‘There are but two of us!’ so often repeated by the hapless Clara Mowbray in St Ronan’s Well, was frequently quoted by Mrs Hemans as an instance of the deepest pathos. The lyric in question was, it is believed, one of the first tributes which appeared in England to the memory of the author of ‘The Lyre and Sword,’ though his name has since become ‘familiar in our ears as household words.’ A translation of the ‘Life of Körner,’ with selections from his poems, &c., was published in 1827, by G. F. Richardson, Esq., whose politeness in presenting a copy of the work to Mrs Hemans, inscribed with a dedicatory sonnet, led to an interchange of letters with that gentleman, and was further the means of procuring for her the high gratification of a direct message, full of the most feeling acknowledgment, from the venerable father of the hero, who afterwards addressed to her a poetical tribute from Theodor Körner’s Father [see p. 425.] Her pleasure in receiving this genuine offering was thus expressed to Mr Richardson, who had been the medium through which it reached her. ‘Theodor Körner’s Vater!’—it is, indeed, a title beautifully expressing all the holy pride which the memory of die treuen Todten[359] must inspire; and awakening every good and high feeling to its sound. I shall prize the lines as a relic. Will you be kind enough to assure M. Körner, with my grateful respects, of the value which will be attached to them, a value so greatly enhanced by their being in his own hand. They are very beautiful, I think, in their somewhat antique and treuherzig[360] simplicity, and worthy to have proceeded from Theodor Körner’s Vater.
“The following almost literal translation of these lines is given by W. B. Chorley, Esq., in his interesting little volume, ‘The Lyre and Sword,’ published in 1834:—
‘Gently a voice from afar is borne to the ear of the mourner;
Mildly it soundeth, yet strong, grief in his bosom to soothe;
Strong in the soul-cheering faith, that hearts have a share in his sorrow,
In whose depths all things holy and noble are shrined.
From that land once dearly beloved by our brave one, the fallen,
Mourning blent with bright fame—cometh a wreath for his urn.
Hail to thee, England the free! thou see’st in the German no stranger.