in the breeze that waves
With low and gentle breath the grass upon our fathers' graves.
There's not a cradle in the bounds of Hellas broad and fair,
But the spirit of our free-born sires is surely hovering there.
It breathes in dreams of fairy-land upon the infant's brain,
And in his first sleep dedicates the child to manhood's pain;
Its summons lures the youth to stand, with new-born joy possessed,
Where once a freeman fell, and there it fires his thrilling breast,
And a shudder runs through all his frame; he knows not if it be
A throb of rapture, or the first sharp pang of agony.
Come, swell our banners on the breeze, thou sacred spirit-band,
Give wings to every warrior's foot, and nerve to every hand.
We go to strike for freedom, to break the oppressor's rod,
We go to battle and to death for our country and our God.
Ye are with us, we hear your wings, we hear in magic tone
Your spirit-voice the paean swell, and mingle with our own.
Ye are with us, ye throng around,--you from Thermopylae,
You from the verdant Marathon, you from the azure sea,
By the cloud-capped rocks of Mykale, at Salamis,--all you
From field and forest, mount and glen, the land of Hellas through!

Whoe'er for freedom fights and falls, his fame no blight shall know,
As long as through heaven's free expanse the breezes freely blow,
As long as in the forest wild the green leaves flutter free,
As long as rivers, mountain-born, roll freely to the sea,
As long as free the eagle's wing exulting cleaves the skies,
As long as from a freeman's heart a freeman's breath doth rise.

When we remember all that was compressed into this short life, we might
well believe that this ceaseless acquiring and creating must have tired
and weakened and injured both body and mind. Such, however, was not the
case. All who knew the poet agree in stating that he never overworked
himself, and that he accomplished all he did with the most perfect ease
and enjoyment. Let us only remember how his life as a student was broken
into by his service during the war, how his journey to Italy occupied
several years of his life, how later in Dessau he had to follow his
profession as teacher and librarian, and then let us turn our thoughts to
all the work of his hands and the creations of his mind, and we are
astonished, not only at the amount of work done, but still more at the
finished form which distinguishes all his works. He was one of the first
who with Zeune, Von der Hagen, and th