What would your Excellency? The piece was fine,
And ours, and played, too, as it should be played;
It drives old grudges out when such divine
Music as that mounts up into your head!
But when the piece was done, back to my line
I crept again, and there I should have staid,
But that just then, to give me another turn,
From those mole-mouths a hymn began to yearn:
A German anthem, that to heaven went
On unseen wings, up from the holy fane;
It was a prayer, and seemed like a lament,
Of such a pensive, grave, pathetic strain
That in my soul it never shall be spent;
And how such heavenly harmony in the brain
Of those thick-skulled barbarians should dwell
I must confess it passes me to tell.
In that sad hymn, I felt the bitter sweet
Of the songs heard in childhood, which the soul
Learns from beloved voices, to repeat
To its own anguish in the days of dole;
A thought of the dear mother, a regret,
A longing for repose and love,--the whole
Anguish of distant exile seemed to run
Over my heart and leave it all undone:
When the strain ceased, it left me pondering
Tenderer thoughts and stronger and more clear;
These men, I mused, the self-same despot king,
Who rules in Slavic and Italian fear,
Tears from their homes and arms that round them cling.
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