ch is
a-waitin' for t'other.
Don't I know him, my darlin', the lusty
young fellow, y'r sweetheart?

Over powerful rocks, and through the hedges
and thickets,
Right away from the snowy Swiss mountains
he plunges at Rheineck
Down to the lake, and straight ahead swims
through it to Constance,
Sayin': "'T's no use o' talkin', I'll have
the gal I'm engaged to!"

But, as he reaches Stein, he goes a little more slowly,
Leavin' the lake where he's decently washed his feet and his body.
Diessenhofen don't please him,--no, nor the convent beside it.
For'ard he goes to Schaffhausen, onto the rocks at the corner;
There he says: "It's no use o' talkin', I'll git to my sweetheart:
Body and life I'll stake, cravat and embroidered suspenders."
Woop! but he jumps! And now he talks to hisself, goin' furder,
Giddy, belike, in his head, but pushes for'ard to Rheinau,
Eglisau, and Kaiserstuhl, and Zurzach, and Waldshut,--
All are behind him, passin' one village after another
Down to Grenzach, and out on the broad and beautiful bottoms
Nigh unto Basle; and there he must stop and look after his license.

* * * * *

Look! isn't that y'r bridegroom a-comin' down yonder to meet you?--
Yes, it's him, it's him, I hear't, for his voice is so jolly!
Yes, it's him, it's him,--with his eyes as blue as the heavens,
With his Swiss knee-breeches o' green, and suspenders o' velvet,
With his shirt o' the color o' pearl, and buttons o' crystal,
With his powerful loins, and his sturdy back and his shoulders,
Grand in his gait, commandin', beautiful, free in his motions,
Proud as a Basle Councilman,--yes, it's the big boy o' Gothard![B]

[Footnote B: The Rhine.]

The daring with which Hebel _countrifies_ (or, rather, _farmerizes_, to
translate Goethe's--word more literally) the spirit of natural objects,
carrying his personifications to that point where the imaginative
borders on the grotesque, is perhaps his strongest characteristic. His
poetic faculty, putting on its Alemannic costume, seems to abdicate all
ambition of moving in a higher sphere of society, but within the bounds
it has chosen allows itself the utmost range of capricious enjoyment.
In another pastoral, called "The Oatmeal Porridge," he takes the grain
which the peasant has sown, makes it a sentient creature, and carries it
through the processes of germinat