One more tale we found under the head of “Legends of Coblence,” so we conclude the scene therein depicted took place at this town; it is called
THE POET’S DEATHBED.
Max of Schenkendorf is well known in Germany by his songs on those combats for liberty, of which so many took place in his Fatherland. The Poet was in the last stage of consumption.
It was the morning of his birthday. Max lay sleeping in bed, but his wife had arisen, and was now busy adorning his chamber with flowers in honour of the Poet’s birthday.
Having arranged all the bouquets, she made up a garland of evergreens, which she placed softly on the brow of the sleeper, fervently praying that it might become an emblem of new laurels which her husband should gain in this new year of his life.
As she leant over him to place the wreath on his head, she tenderly kissed the lips of the sleeper, and softly she murmured, “Oh, would I could kiss you to health!”
The decorations now were completed, and softly the wife stept from the husband’s bedside, softly she passed from the chamber.
But as she went out an unbidden guest entered there—Death came over the threshold and took the wife’s place. Death strode up to the bed and laid his chill hand on the feverish brow of the sleeper: closer and closer then wound those arms which supplanted for ever those of the wife—closer and closer, until icy and rigid became the frame of the Poet.
An hour slowly passed, and the fond wife re-entered. Max now was lying a corpse, crowned with the wreath that she had placed upon his living brow. In agony she cried, “Wake, O wake, my own, my beloved! Depart not from her who lives but in thee! One word, but one——”