Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
Nuremberg
1In the valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
2Rise the blue Franconian mountains, Nuremberg, the ancient, stands.
3Quaint old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,
4Memories haunt thy pointed gables, like the rooks that round them throng:
5Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
6Had their dwelling in thy castle, time-defying, centuries old;
7And thy brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,
8That their great imperial city stretched its hand through every clime.
9In the court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,
10Stands the mighty linden planted by Queen Cunigunde's hand;
11On the square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
12Sat the poet Melchior singing Kaiser Maximilian's praise.
13Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art:
14Fountains wrought with richest sculpture standing in the common mart;
15And above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,
16By a former age commissioned as apostles to our own.
17In the church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,
18And in bronze the Twelve Apostles guard from age to age their trust;
19In the church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,
20Like the foamy sheaf of fountains, rising through the painted air.
21Here, when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,
22ived and labored Albrecht Dürer, the Evangelist of Art;
23Hence in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
24Like an emigrant he wandered, seeking for the Better Land.
25Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies;
26Dead he is not, but departed, -- for the artist never dies.
27Fairer seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
28That he once has trod its pavement, that he once has breathed its air!
29Through these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
30Walked of yore the Mastersingers, chanting rude poetic strains.
31From remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,
32Building nests in Fame's great temple, as in spouts the swallows build.
33As the weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme,
34And the smith his iron measures hammered to the anvil's chime;
35Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom
36In the forge's dust and cinders, in the tissues of the loom.
37Here Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,
38Wisest of the Twelve Wise Masters, in huge folios sang and laughed.
39But his house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,
40And a garland in the window, and his face above the door;
41Painted by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song,
42As the old man gray and dove-like, with his great beard white and long.
43And at night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,
44Quaffing ale from pewter tankards, in the master's antique chair.
45Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye
46Wave these mingled shapes and figures, like a faded tapestry.
47Not thy Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard;
48But thy painter, Albrecht Dürer, and Hans Sachs thy cobbler bard.
49Thus, O Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,
50As he paced thy streets and court-yards, sang in thought his careless lay:
51Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil,
52The nobility of labor, -- the long pedigree of toil.
Notes
1-2] Nuremberg: central Bavarian city on the Pegnitz river that was renowned for its intellectual, artistic, and religious freedom during the Renaissance.
10] Queen Cunigunde: wife of Henry II, Kunigunde was later canonized for disproving slanders by walking barefoot over fiery irons.
12] Melchior: Melchior Pfinzing, 16th-century German poet who made the emperor Maximilian hero of the poem Tenerdank.
Kaiser Maximilian: Maximilian II (1527-76).
17] the church of sainted Sebald: Gothic church with a canopied bronze tomb by Peter Vischer in a shrine for the saint. The shrine has more than 100 figures, including the Twelve Apostles.
19] the church of sainted Lawrence: Gothic church dedicated to St. Lawrence Justinian (1381-1456), with a ciborium (container for the Host) formed as a 64-foot spire sculpted by Adam Krafft.
22] Albrecht Dürer: German painter and the inventor of etching (1471-1528) who lived in this city. He was renowned for his woodcuts of Christian themes -- hence "Evangelist of Art."
25] Emigravit: "he has departed."
30] Mastersingers: meistersinger, a member of a 15th-16th-century German guild dedicated to poetry and music. The Nuremberg meistersingers included Hans Sachs.
37] Hans Sachs: German cobbler-poet (1494-1576) who lived in this city.
42] "In a letter to Freiligrath, written in the spring of 1844, Mr. Longfellow says: 'Here I send you a poem on Nuremberg ....I trust I have not mistranslated wie ein Taub Jermas. It certainly stands for eine Taube or ein Tauber, and is dove and not deaf, though old Hans Sachs was deaf. But that Puschman describes afterwards when he says: --
Dann sein Red und
Gehör begunnt
Ihm abzugehn, etc.
Therefore dove-like it is and shall be, for F. says, "I would have it so at any rate!" and at any rate I will.'" (Editor, p. 197.)
Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.
Original text: The Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, with Bibliographical and Critical Notes, Riverside Edition (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1890), I, 197-201. PS 2250 E90 Robarts Library.
First publication date:
1845
Publication date note: In The Belfry of Bruges and Other Poems
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: RPO 1998.
Recent editing: 4:2002/4/6
Composition date:
1844
Composition date note: Spring, 1844
Form: couplets
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