gcls_WFP_021

[Picture of old church]
Nurnberg.
St. Lorenzkirche.

[Picture of city street with cars and people]
Nurnberg. Konigsstrasse mit Lorenzerkirche.

Nuremberg.
In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancent, stands.
Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaiint old town of art and song,
Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng.

Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors; rough and bold,
Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;
And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,
That their great imperial city stretches its hand through every clime.
In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,
Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;
On the square the oriel window, where, in old heroid days,
Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.
Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art:
Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing inthe common mart;
And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,
By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.
In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,
And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;
In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,
Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.
Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,
Lived and laboured Albrecht Dureer, the Evangelist of Art;
Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
"Emigravit" is the inscription on the tombstone where he lies,
Dead he is not, but departed, - for the artist never dies.
Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains.
Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,
Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.
But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,
And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;
Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song,
As the "old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long."
And a night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,
Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.
Vanished is the ancient splendour, and before my dreamy eye
Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.
Not thy councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the worlds' regard;
But thy painter, Albrecht Durer and Hans Sachs, thy cobbler-bard.
Thus, o Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,
As he paced thy streets and courtyards, sang in thought his careless lay.

Taken off "Nurembert". A poem of Henry W. Longfellow.

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