free-verse45 lines
Granite.
by Joseph Victor von ScheffelIn unterirdischer Kammer
Sprach grollend der alte Granit:
'Da droben den w'ss'rigen Jammer
Den mach' ich jetzt l'nger nicht mit.'
In his lair subterranean, grumbling
Old Granite said: 'One thing is sure,
That slopping and slippery tumbling
Up yonder, no more I'll endure.
So wearily wallows the water
His billows of brine o'er the land,
'Stead of prouder and fairer and better
All is turning to slime and to sand.
'That would be a nice limestony cover,
A sweet geological swash,
If the coat of the wide world all over
Were one sedimentary wash.
By and by 'twill be myth and no true thing
What were hills - what was high or was low.
The deuce take their drifting and smoothing;
Hurrah! far eruption I go!'
So he spoke, and to aid him, pro rata,
The brave-hearted Porphyry flew,
The weak-hearted crystalline strata
He scornfully shattered in two.
With flashing and crashing and bellow,
As though the world's end were to dread,
Even Graywack, that decent old fellow,
In terror stood up on his head.
Also Stonecoal and Limestone and Trias
Fast vanished, internally mined.
Loud wailed in the Jura, the Lias,
That the wild fire had scorched him behind.
And Limestone, the marl-plot of chalkers,
Said later, in deep earnest chimes,
'Was there no one, to stop, 'mong you talkers,
This wild revolution betimes?'
But upwards through strata and fountains
Passed the conquering hero with heat,
Until from the sunniest mountains
He gazed on the world at his feet.
Then he shouted with yodling and singing,
'Hurrah! 'Twas courageously done,
Even we can be doing and bringing
What it only needs pluck to be won.'
Translated From The German Of Joseph Victor Scheffel By Charles G. Leland.