To Ebert

EBERT, Ebert, my friend! Here over the darkbright wine
A horrible phantasy masters me!
In vain thou shewest me where the chaliceglasses shine,
In vain thy words ring cheerily:
I must aside and weep — if haply my weeping may
Assuage this agony of distress.
O, tears! in pity Nature blent you with human clay,
To mitigate human wretchedness;
For, were your fountain uplocked, and you forbidden to flow,
Could Man sustain his sorrows an hour?
Then let me aside and weep: this thought of dolour and woe
Struggles within me with giant power.

O, Ebert! if all have perished, and under shroud and pall
Lie still and voiceless in Death's abyss —
If thou and I be the lone and withered survivors of all?

Art not thou, also, speechless at this?
Glazes not horror thine eye? Glares it not blank without soul?

So from mine, too, departed the light,
When first this harrowing phantom over the purple bowl
Struck my spirit with thundermight.
Sudden as when a wanderer, hastening home to the faces
That circle with smiles his joyous hearth,
To his blooming offspring and spouse, whom already in thought he embraces,
By the tempest-bolt is felled to the earth,
Deathstricken, so that his bones are blasted to blackest ashes,
The while in triumph is heard to roll
The booming thunder through Heaven, so suddenly flashed, so flashes
This vision athwart my shuddering soul,
Deadening the might of mine arm, and darkening the light of mine eyes,
And shrivelling the flesh of my heart with despair.

O! in the depth of the Night I saw the Death-Pageant arise!

And — Ebert! — the souls of our friends were there.
O! in the depths of the Night I saw the Graves laid bare!
Around me thronged the immortal Band!

When gentle GISEKE'S eye no longer its lustre shall wear;
When faithful CRAMER, lost to our land,
Shall moulder in dust; when the words that GAERTNER and RABNER have spoken
Shall only be echoed through years in distance;
When every sweetlysounding chord shall be ruefully broken
In the noble GELLERT'S harmonious existence;
When his early companions of pleasure young ROTHE, the social and bright,
Shall meet on the charnel chamber-floor,
And when from a longer exile ingenious SCHLEGEL shall write
To the cherished friends of his youth no more;
When for SCHMIDT, the beloved and evanished, these weariful eyes shall weep
No longer their wonted affectionate rain;
When HAGKDOKN at last in our Father's bosom shall sleep;
Oh, Ebert! what then are We who remain?
What but Woe-consecrated, whom here a dreary doom
Has left to mourn for those that are gone?
If then one of us should die (Behold how my thought of gloom
Further and darklier hurries me on !)
If then, of us, one should die, and ONE alone should survive —
And oh, should that sad survivor be I —
If she, the unknown Beloved, with whom I am destined to wive,
If she, too, under the mould should lie!

If I be the Only, the Lonely, the earth's companionless
One,
Oh, answer! Shalt thou, my undying soul,
For friendship created, shalt thou preserve thy feeling and tone,
In the days that then may vacantly roll?
Or shalt thou, in slumberful stupor, imagine that Daylight is passed,
And the reign of Night has begun for thee?
Haply! but shouldst thou upstart, oh, immortal spirit, at last.

And feel all the weight of thy misery,
Wilt thou not, suffering spirit, in agony shriekingly call
To the sepulchres where thy Sleepers are —
"Oh! ye graves of my Dead! Ye tombs of my dearest ones all!
Why are ye severed apart so far?

Why not rather ingrouped in the blossomy valleys yonder,
Or clustered in groves, or flowercrovvned?
Guide an expiring old man! With faltering feet will I wander
And plant upon every hallowed mound
A cypresstree, beneath whose yet undarkeuing shade
May rest my happier daughters and sons,
And oft through its boughs at night shall stand before me portrayed
The effigies of my immortal ones!
Till, worn with weeping, I too shall finally join those immortals;
Then, oh! Grave, beside which I shall be!
Grave over which I shall die! — I call on thee — open thy portals,
And hide for ever my tears and me!"

Horrible dream! from which, as in chains, I struggle to waken,
Terrible as the Judgment-hour,
And as Eternity solemn! My spirit, appalled and shaken,
Can wrestle no longer against thy power.