The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06

Автор

Коллектив авторов

Жанр

Зарубежная классика

Год написания книги

2018

<< 1 ... 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ... 24 >>

На страницу:

Перейти

7 из 24

Настройки чтения

Размер шрифта

Высота строк

Поля

Up there in the King's own banquet hall,
Belshazzar held royal festival.

The satraps were marshaled in glittering line
And emptied their beakers of sparkling wine.

The beakers they clinked, and the satraps' hurras
in the ears of the stiff-necked King rang his praise.

The King's hot cheeks were with revel dyed,
The wine made swell his heart with pride.

Blind madness his haughty stomach spurred,
And he slandered the Godhead with sinful word,

And strutting in pride he blasphemed, the crowd
Of servile courtiers applauding loud.

The King commanded with haughty stare;
The slave was gone, and again was there.

Much wealth of gold on his head bare he;
'Twas reft from Jehovah's sanctuary.

And the King took hold of a sacred cup
With his impious hand, and they filled it up;

And he drank to the bottom in one deep draught,
And loud, the foam on his lips, he laughed:

"Jehovah! Thy glories I spit upon;
I am the King of Babylon!"

But scarce had the awful words been said
When the King's heart withered with secret dread.

The boisterous laughter was stifled all,
And corpselike still did wax the hall;

Lo! lo! on the whited wall there came
The likeness of a man's hand in flame,

And wrote, and wrote, in letters of flame,
And wrote and vanished, and no more came.

The King stark-staring sat, a-quail,
With knees a-knocking, and face death-pale,

The satraps' blood ran cold—none stirred;
They sat like statues, without a word.

The Magians came; but none of them all
Could read those letters of flame on the wall.

But in that same night of his vaunting vain
By his satraps' hand was Belshazzar slain.

* * * * *

THE PILGRIMAGE TO KEVLAAR[27 - Translator: Sir Theodore Martin. Permission The Walter Scott Publishing Co., Ltd., London.] (1823)

1

The mother stood at the window;
Her son lay in bed, alas!
"Will you not get up, dear William,
To see the procession pass?"

"O mother, I am so ailing,
I neither can hear nor see;
I think of my poor dead Gretchen,
And my heart grows faint in me."

"Get up, we will go to Kevlaar;
Your book and your rosary take;
The Mother of God will heal you,
And cure your heart of its ache."

The Church's banners are waving,
They are chanting a hymn divine;
'Tis at Köln is that procession,
At Köln upon the Rhine.

With the throng the mother follows;
Her son she leads with her; and now
They both of them sing in the chorus,
"Ever honored, O Mary, be thou!"

2

The Mother of God at Kevlaar
Is drest in her richest array;
She has many a cure on hand there,
Many sick folk come to her today.

And her, for their votive offerings,
The suffering sick folk greet
With limbs that in wax are molded,
Many waxen hands and feet.