The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, No. 57, July, 1862. Various

seven earth-works did we clear,

      The bear-skins broke and fled;

      Then, Frederic, went thy grenadier

      High over heaps of dead:

      Remembered, in the murderous fight,

      God, Fatherland, and thee,—

      Turned, from the deep and smoky night,

      His Frederic to see,

      And trembled,—with a flush of fear

      His visage mounted high;

      He trembled, not that death was near,

      But lest thou, too, shouldst die:

      Despised the balls like scattered seed,

      The cannon's thunder-tone,

      Fought fiercely, did a hero's deed,

      Till all thy foes had flown.

      Now thanks he God for all His might,

      And sings, Victoria!

      And all the blood from out this fight

      Flows to Theresia.

      And if she will not stay the plague,

      Nor peace to thee concede,

      Storm with us, Frederic, first her Prague,

      Then, to Vienna lead!

      The love which the soldiers had for Frederic survived in the army after all the veterans of his wars had passed away. It is well preserved in this camp-song:—

THE INVALIDES AT FATHER FREDERIC'S GRAVE

      Here stump we round upon our crutches, round our Father's grave we go, And from our eyelids down our grizzled beards the bitter tears will flow.

      'T was long ago, with Frederic living, that we

      got our lawful gains:

      A meagre ration now they serve us,—life's no

      longer worth the pains.

      Here stump we round, deserted orphans, and

      with tears each other see,—

      Are waiting for our marching orders hence,

      to be again with thee.

      Yes, Father, only could we buy thee, with our

      blood, by Heaven, yes,—

      We Invalides, forlorn detachment, straight

      through death would storming press!

      When the German princes issued to their subjects unlimited orders for Constitutions, to be filled up and presented after the domination of Napoleon was destroyed, all classes hastened, fervid with hope and anti-Gallic feeling, to offer their best men for the War of Liberation. Then the poets took again their rhythm from an air vibrating with the cannon's pulse. There was Germanic unity for a while, fed upon expectation and the smoke of successful fields. Most of the songs of this period have been already translated. Ruckert, in a series of verses which he called "Sonnets in Armor," gave a fine scholarly expression to the popular desires. Here is his exultation over the Battle of Leipsic:—

      Can there no song

      Roar with a might

      Loud as the fight

      Leipsic's region along?

      Three days and three nights,

      No moment of rest,

      And not for a jest,

      Went thundering the fights.

      Three days and three nights

      Leipsic Fair kept: Frenchmen who pleasured

      There with an iron yardstick were measured,

      Bringing the reckoning with them to rights.

      Three days and all night

      A battue of larks the Leipsicker make;

      Every haul a hundred he takes,

      A thousand each flight.

      Ha! it is good,

      Now that the Russian can boast no longer

      He alone of us is stronger

      To slake his steppes with hostile blood.

      Not in the frosty North alone,

      But here in Meissen,

      Here at Leipsic on the Pleissen,

      Can the French be overthrown.

      Shallow Pleissen deep is flowing;

      Plains upheaving,

      The dead receiving,

      Seem to mountains for us growing.

      They will be our mountains never,

      But this fame

      Shall be our claim

      On the rolls of earth forever.

      What all this amounted to, when the German people began to send in their constitutional cartes-blanches, is nicely taken off by Hoffman von Fallersleben, in this mock war-song, published in 1842:—

      All sing.

      Hark to the beating drum!

      See how the people come!

      Flag in the van!

      We follow, man for man.

      Rouse, rouse

      From earth and house!

      Ye women and children, good night!

      Forth we hasten, we hasten to the fight,

      With God for our King and Fatherland.

      A night-patrol of 1813 sings.

      O God! and why, and why,

      For princes' whim, renown, and might,

      To the fight?

      For court-flies and other crows,

      To blows?

      For the nonage of our folk,

      Into smoke?

      For must-war-meal and class-tax,

      To thwacks?

      For privilege and censordom—

      Hum—

      Into battle without winking?

      But—I was thinking—

      All sing.

      Hark to the heating drum!

      See how the people come!

      Flag in the van!

      We follow, man for man:

      In battle's roar

      The time is o'er

      To ask for reasons,—hear, the drum

      Again is calling,—tum—tum—tum,—

      With God for King and Fatherland.

      Or to put it in two stanzas of his, written on a visit to the Valhalla, or Hall of German Worthies, at Regensburg:—

      I salute thee, sacred Hall,

      Chronicle of German glory!

      I salute ye, heroes all

      Of the new time and the hoary!

      Patriot heroes, from your sleep

      Into being could ye pass!

      No, a king would rather keep

      Patriots in stone and brass.

      The Danish sea-songs, like those of the English, are far better than the land-songs of the soldiers: