For her brother was a soldier too, and not afraid to die.
And if a comrade seek her love, I ask her in my name,
To listen to him kindly, without regret or shame;
And to hang the old sword in its place (my father’s sword and mine),
For the honor of old Bingen,—dear Bingen on the Rhine!
“There’s another—not a sister;—in the happy days gone by,
You’d have known her by the merriment that sparkled in her eye;
Too innocent for coquetry, too fond for idle scorning,—
O friend, I fear the lightest heart makes sometimes heaviest mourning!
Tell her the last night of my life,—for ere this moon be risen,