Nuremberg
In the
valley of the Pegnitz, where across broad meadow-lands
Quaint
old town of toil and traffic, quaint old town of art and song,
Memories of the Middle Ages, when the emperors, rough and bold,
And thy
brave and thrifty burghers boasted, in their uncouth rhyme,
In the
court-yard of the castle, bound with many an iron band,
On the
square the oriel window, where in old heroic days
Everywhere I see around me rise the wondrous world of Art:
And
above cathedral doorways saints and bishops carved in stone,
In the
church of sainted Sebald sleeps enshrined his holy dust,
In the
church of sainted Lawrence stands a pix of sculpture rare,
Here,
when Art was still religion, with a simple, reverent heart,
Hence
in silence and in sorrow, toiling still with busy hand,
Emigravit is the inscription on the tomb-stone where he lies;
Fairer
seems the ancient city, and the sunshine seems more fair,
Through
these streets so broad and stately, these obscure and dismal lanes,
From
remote and sunless suburbs came they to the friendly guild,
As the
weaver plied the shuttle, wove he too the mystic rhyme,
Thanking God, whose boundless wisdom makes the flowers of poesy bloom
Here
Hans Sachs, the cobbler-poet, laureate of the gentle craft,
But his
house is now an ale-house, with a nicely sanded floor,
Painted
by some humble artist, as in Adam Puschman's song,
And at
night the swart mechanic comes to drown his cark and care,
Vanished is the ancient splendor, and before my dreamy eye
Not thy
Councils, not thy Kaisers, win for thee the world's regard;
Thus, O
Nuremberg, a wanderer from a region far away,
Gathering from the pavement's crevice, as a floweret of the soil, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
Mehrere bekannte Dichter haben das Poem Longfellows ins Deutsche übersetzt, u. a. Ferdinand Freiligrath und Friedrich Marx. Eine Übersetzung des Nürnberger Studienrats Wilhelm Steuerwald aus dem Jahr 1913 hier |