I ate and drank with an appetite good, And these thoughts then cross’d my noddle: “This Campe is really an excellent man, “And of publishers quite the model.
“Another publisher, I feel sure, “Would have left me of hunger to perish; “But he has given me drink as well, “His name I ever shall cherish.
“I thank the mighty Lord of all “Who this juice of the grape created, “And Campe to me as a publisher gave, “Whose merits can’t be overrated.
“I thank the mighty Lord of all “Who by His own mere motion “Created on earth the Rhenish wine, “And the oysters in the ocean.
“Who also made the lemons to grow, “The oyster’s flavour to sweeten,-- “O may I peacefully to-night “Digest what I have eaten!”
The Rhenish wine makes my feelings soft, All quarrelsome thoughts congealing Within my breast, and kindling instead A philanthropic feeling.
It now compell’d me to leave the room, And through the streets to wander; My soul sought a soul, and the sight of each dress Of a woman made it still fonder.
In moments like this, with grief I could melt, While my yearning makes me tremble; The cats appear to me all too grey, And Helens the women resemble.--
And when I came to the Drehbahn Street, I saw in the moonbeams glancing The noble form of a woman fair, With stately grace advancing.
Her face was perfectly healthy and round, Her cheek like a damask rose was, Like a turquoise her eye, like a cherry her mouth, While somewhat reddish her nose was.
Her head was cover’d with a cap Of snowy stiff linen, not ragged, But folded like a mural crown, With turrets and battlements jagged.
She wore as her dress a tunic white Which down to her calves descended; And O what calves! The pedestals they Of two Doric columns splendid.
A very worldly naïveté Could be read in her every feature, But her superhuman hinder parts Betray’d a superior creature.
She now approach’d me, and straightway said: “To the Elbe here’s a welcome hearty! “E’en after an absence of thirteen years, “I see that thou’rt still the same party!
“Perchance thou seekest the souls so fair “Who so often used to meet thee, “And all night long in this beautiful place “With their reveries loved to greet thee.
“By that hundred-headed hydra, Life, “That monster fierce, they were swallow’d; “Thou’lt find those olden times no more, “Nor those friends once lovingly follow’d.