* * * * *

THE TROOPER’S DEATH.

  The weary night is o’er at last! 
  We ride so still, we ride so fast! 
    We ride where Death is lying. 
  The morning wind doth coldly pass,
  Landlord! we’ll take another glass,
        Ere dying.

  Thou, springing grass, that art so green,
  Shall soon be rosy red, I ween,
    My blood the hue supplying! 
  I drink the first glass, sword in hand,
  To him who for the Fatherland
        Lies dying!

  Now quickly comes the second draught,
  And that shall be to freedom quaffed
    While freedom’s foes are flying! 
  The rest, O land, our hope and faith! 
  We’d drink to thee with latest breath,
        Though dying!

  My darling!—­ah, the glass is out! 
  The bullets ring, the riders shout—­
    No time for wine or sighing! 
  There! bring my love the shattered glass—­
  Charge!  On the foe! no joys surpass
        Such dying!

From the German of GEORG HERWEGH. 
Translation of ROSSITER W. RAYMOND.

* * * * *

BINGEN ON THE RHINE.

  A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers,
  There was lack of woman’s nursing, there was dearth of woman’s
          tears;
  But a comrade stood beside him, while his life-blood ebbed away,
  And bent, with pitying glances, to hear what he might say. 
  The dying soldier faltered, and he took that comrade’s hand,
  And he said, “I nevermore shall see my own, my native land;
  Take a message, and a token, to some distant friends of mine,
  For I was born at Bingen,—­at Bingen on the Rhine.

  “Tell my brothers and companions, when they meet and crowd around,
  To hear my mournful story, in that pleasant vineyard ground,
  That we fought the battle bravely, and when the day was done,
  Full many a corse lay ghastly pale beneath the setting sun;
  And, mid the dead and dying, were some grown old in wars,—­
  The death-wound on their gallant breasts, the last of many scars;
  And some were young, and suddenly beheld life’s morn decline,—­
  And one had come from Bingen,—­fair Bingen on the Rhine.

  “Tell my mother that her other son shall comfort her old age;
  For I was still a truant bird, that thought his home a cage. 
  For my father was a soldier, and even as a child
  My heart leaped forth to hear him tell of struggles fierce and wild;
  And when he died, and left us to divide his scanty hoard,
  I let them take whate’er they would,—­but kept my father’s sword;
  And with boyish love I hung it where the bright light used to shine,
  On the cottage wall at Bingen,—­calm Bingen on the Rhine.