Songs of the Affections, with Other Poems/The Exile's Dirge
THE EXILE'S DIRGE.[1]
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious Winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Cymbeline.
I attended a funeral where there were a number of the German settlers present. After I had performed such service as is usual on similar occasions, a most venerable-looking old man came forward, and asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther's Hymns, and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and using the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea from the Vaterland, a word which often occurred in this hymn. It was a long, slow, and mournful air, which they sung as they bore the body along; the words "mein Gott," "mein Bruder" and "Vaterland," died away in distant echoes amongst the woods. I shall long remember that funeral hymn—Flint's Recollections of the Valley of the Mississippi.
There went a dirge through the forest's gloom.
—An exile was borne to a lonely tomb.
"Brother!" (so the chant was sung
In the slumberer's native tongue,)
"Friend and brother! not for thee
Shall the sound of weeping be:—
Long the Exile's woe hath lain
On thy life a withering chain;
Music from thine own blue streams,
Wander'd through thy fever-dreams;
Voices from thy country's vines,
Met thee 'midst the alien pines,
And thy true heart died away;
And thy spirit would not stay."
So swell'd the chant; and the deep wind's moan
Seem'd through the cedars to murmur—"Gone!"
"Brother! by the rolling Rhine,
Stands the home that once was thine—
Brother! now thy dwelling lies
Where the Indian arrow flies!
He that blest thine infant head,
Fills a distant greensward bed;
She that heard thy lisping prayer,
Slumbers low beside him there;
They that earliest with thee play'd,
Rest beneath their own oak shade,
Far, far hence!—yet sea nor shore
Haply, brother! part ye more;
God hath call'd thee to that band
In the immortal Fatherland!"
"The Fatherland!"—with that sweet word
A burst of tears 'midst the strain was heard.
"Brother! were we there with thee
Rich would many a meeting be!
Many a broken garland bound,
Many a mourn'd and lost one found!
But our task is still to bear,
Still to breathe in changeful air;
Loved and bright things to resign,
As even now this dust of thine;
Yet to hope!—to hope in Heaven,
Though flowers fall, and ties be riven—
Yet to pray! and wait the hand
Beckoning to the Fatherland!"
And the requiem died in the forest's gloom;—
They had reach'd the Exile's lonely tomb.
- ↑ Published in the Winter's Wreath for 1830.