(Herlig er Krigerens Faerd.)
Good is the soldier's trade,
For envy well made:
The lightning-blade
Over force-men he swingeth;
A loved one shall prize
The honor he bringeth;
Is there a duty?
That's soldier's booty,
To have it he dies.
True for his king and land
The Northman will stand;
An oath is a band,
He never can rend it;
The dear coast, 't is right
A son should defend it;
For battle he burneth,
Death's smile he returneth,
And bleeds with delight.
Scars well set off his face,
Each one is a grace;
His profit they trace,
No labor shines brighter:
A wreath is the scar
On the brow of a fighter;
His maid thinks him fairer,
His ornament rarer
Than coat with a star.
Reaches the king his hand,
That makes his soul grand,
And fast loyal band
Round his heart it is slinging;
From Fatherland's good
The motion was springing:
His deeds so requited,
Is gratefully lighted
A man's highest mood.
Bravery's holy fire,
Beam nobler and higher,
And light our desire
A path out of madness!
By courage and deed
We conquer peace-gladness:
We suffer for that thing,
We strike but for that thing,
And gladly we bleed.
But our material threatens the space we have at command. Four more specimens must suffice for the present. They are all favorite soldier-songs. The first is by Chamisso, known popularly as the author of "Peter Schlemihl's Shadow," and depicts the mood of a soldier who has been detailed to assist in a military execution:
The muffled drums to our marching play.
How distant the spot, and how long the way!
Oh, were I at rest, and the bitterness through!
Methinks it will break my heart in two!
Him only I loved of all below,
Him only who yet to death must go;
At the rolling music we parade,
And of me too, me, the choice is made!
Once more, and the last, he looks upon
The cheering light of heaven's sun;
But now his eyes they are binding tight:
God grant to him rest and other light!
Nine muskets are lifted to the eye,
Eight bullets have gone whistling by;
They trembled all with comrades' smart,
But II hit him in his heart!
The next is by Von Holtei:
THE VETERAN TO HIS CLOAKFull thirty years art thou of age, hast many a
storm lived through,
Brother-like hast round me tightened,
And whenever cannons lightened,
Both of us no terror knew.
Wet soaking to the skin we lay for many a
blessed night,
Thou alone hast warmth imparted,
And if I was heavy-hearted,
Telling thee would make me light.
My secrets thou hast never spoke, wert ever still and true;
Every tatter did befriend me,
Therefore I'll no longer mend thee,
Lest, old chap, 't would make thee new.
And dearer still art thou to ma when jests about thee roll;
For where the rags below are dropping,
There went through the bullets popping,
Every bullet makes a hole.
And when the final bullet comes to stop a German heart,
Then, old cloak, a grave provide me,
Weather-beaten friend, still hide me,
As I sleep in thee apart.
There lie we till the roll-call together in the grave:
For the roll I shall be heedful,
Therefore it will then be needful
For me an old cloak to have.
The next one is taken from a student-song book, and was probably written in 1814:
THE CANTEENJust help me, Lottie, as I spring;
My arm is feeble, see,
I still must have it in a sling;
Be softly now with me!
But do not let the canteen slip,
Here, take it first, I pray,
For when that's broken from my lip,
All joys will flow away.
"And why for that so anxious?pshaw!
It is not worth a pin:
The common glass, the bit of straw,
And not a drop within!"
No matter, Lottie, take it out,
'T is past your reckoning:
Yes, look it round and round about,
There drank from itmy King!
By Leipsic near, if you must know,
'T was just no children's play,
A ball hit me a grievous blow,
And in the crowd I lay;
Nigh death, they bore me from the scene,
My garments off they fling,
Yet held I fast by my canteen,
There drank from itmy King!
For once our ranks in passing through
He paused,we saw his face;
Around us keen the volleys flew,
He calmly kept his place.
He thirsted,I could see it plain,
And courage took to bring
My old canteen for him to drain,
He drank from itmy King!
He touched me on the shoulder here,
And said, "I thank thee, friend,
Thy liquor gives me timely cheer,
Thou didst right well intend."
O'erjoyed at this, I cried aloud,
"O comrades, who can bring
Canteen like this to make him proud?
There drank from itmy King!"
That old canteen shall no one have,
The best of treasures mine;
Put it at last upon my grave,
And under it this line:
"He fought at Leipsic, whom this green
Is softly covering;
Best household good was his canteen,
There drank from ithis King!"
And finally, a song for all the campaigns of life:
Morning-red! morning-red!
Lightest me towards the dead!
Soon the trumpets will be blowing,
Then from life must I be going,
I, and comrades many a one.
Soon as thought, soon as thought,
Pleasure to an end is brought;
Yesterday upon proud horses,
Shot to-day, our quiet corses
Are to-morrow in the grave.
And how soon, and how soon,
Vanish shape and beauty's noon!
Of thy cheeks a moment vaunting,
Like the milk and purple haunting,
Ah, the roses fade away!
And what, then, and what, then,
Is the joy and lust of men?
Ever caring, ever getting,
From the early morn-light fretting
Till the day is past and gone.
Therefore still, therefore still
I content me, as God will:
Fighting stoutly, nought shall shake me:
For should death itself o'ertake me,
Then a gallant soldier dies.
FROUDE'S HENRY THE EIGHTH
The spirit of historical criticism in the present age is on the whole a charitable spirit. Many public characters have been heard through their advocates at the bar of history, and the judgments long since passed upon them and their deeds, and deferentially accepted for centuries, have been set aside, and others of a widely different character pronounced. Julius Caesar, who was wont to stand as the model usurper, and was regarded as having wantonly destroyed Roman liberty in order to gratify his towering ambition, is now regarded as a political reformer of the very highest and best class,as the man who alone thoroughly understood his age and his country, and who was Heaven's own instrument to rescue unnumbered millions from the misrule of an oligarchy whose members looked upon mankind as their proper prey. He did not overthrow the freedom of Rome, but he took from Romans the power to destroy the personal freedom of all the races by them subdued. He identified the interests of the conquered peoples with those of the central government, so far as that work was possible,thus proceeding in the spirit of the early Roman conquerors, who sought to comprehend even the victims of their wars in the benefits which proceeded from those wars. This view of his career is a sounder one than that which so long prevailed, and which enabled orators to round periods with references to the Rubicon. It is not thirty years since one of the first of American statesmen told the national Senate that "Julius Caesar struck down Roman liberty at Pharsalia," and probably there was not one man in his audience who supposed that he was uttering anything beyond a truism, though they must have been puzzled to discover any resemblance between "the mighty Julius" and Mr. Martin Van Buren, the gentleman whom the orator was cutting up, and who was actually in the chair while Mr. Calhoun was seeking to kill him, in a political sense, by quotations from Plutarch's Lives. We have learnt something since 1834 concerning Rome and Caesar as well as of our own country and its chiefs, and the man who should now bring forward the conqueror of Gaul as a vulgar usurper would be almost as much laughed at as would be that man who should insist that General Jackson destroyed American liberty when he removed the deposits from the national bank. The facts and fears of one generation often furnish material for nothing but jests and jeers to that generation's successors; and we who behold a million of men in arms, fighting for or against the American Union, and all calling themselves Americans, are astonished when we read or remember that our immediate predecessors in the political world went to the verge of madness on the Currency question. Perhaps the men of 1889 may be equally astonished, when they shall turn to files of newspapers that were published in 1862, and read therein the details of those events that now excite so painful an interest in hundreds of thousands of families. Nothing is so easy as to condemn the past, except the misjudging of the present, and the failure to comprehend the future.