Poems (Kennedy)/The Soul of Germany

by Sara Beaumont Kennedy

"THE SOUL OF GERMANY"

THE soul of Germany! How fair it shone
 Once in the eyes of all the world,
Soaring in upward flight to sunlit heights,
 Its glancing pinions wide unfurled.

The soul of Germany was Wagner, Bach;
 Was Mozart singing to the stars,
Was Goethe opening vistas bright with dreams,
 Was Schiller letting down the day-spring's bars—

Was Heine calling through the paling night—
 Holbein and Hofman with uplifted brush,
Or Gluck's or great Beethoven's wonder touch
 Sonorous in the throbbing hush.

These and their kindred Genii were the soul
 Of Germany before there fell
Upon her that fierce Hohenzollern blight
 With lust of power and scorch of hell—

Her soul before her war-crazed men forgot
 The heights for which her "science" stood—
Her soul before her unshamed women went
 "Conscript" to unwed motherhood.

But now, where Schumann sang the despot rules,
 Sordid with hate the land that Handel knew—
The "soul" of Germany takes far its flight
 And vultures wheel where once its radiance flew!