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the poem  

Teutoburg Forest

 

 
Caput XI,
stanzas 9-16
"engl"
"dt"
 
 

 



 

 

  the journey    
  overview route close-up topographical detail

 

[img]

caption

[img]

title from Germany,
by Streit, 1842



[img]

title from Arrowsmith, Germany, c. 1803


  the text notes and resources
  Caput XI:9-16  
 

view manuscript
 
 
     
9

The friends of truth would be fighting no more
With curs in the press; the arena
They would figure in rather, at mortal grips
With the lion, jackal, hyena.

dt text .

note.

 

10

We should now have had only one, instead
Of six-and-thirty, Neros.
To defy the tyrant's myrmidons
We had opened our veins like heroes.

dt text .

• x
11

Our Schelling, known as Seneca,
Would have perished like him. Our dictum
In the works of our own Cornelius had been,
"Cacatum non est pictum."

dt text .

• x
12

Thank God! the Romans were put to flight,
And the victory was Hermann's;
Varus succumbed with his legions doomed,
And we remained good Germans.

dt text .

• x
13

We're a German folk with a German tongue, '
Which will serve its turn, and pass in us;
And the Swabians—well, they are Swabians still,
And an ass is an ass, not asinus.

dt text .

• x
14

The eagle-order Raumer wears
As scamp, and not scampatius;
And Freiligrath writes in his wretched rhyme—
Of a truth he's no Flaccus Horatius.

dt text .

• x
15

Massmann, thank God! speaks no Latin at all;
The drama Birch-Pfeifer's trade is,
And she tipples no nasty turpentine
Like the gallant Roman ladies.

dt text .

 
16

O Hermann, to you we owe it all!
It is right you should be rewarded
With a monument brave at Detmold built.
I myself have subscribed toward it.

dt text .

 

 

 
 

 
   
     
 
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