And quiet Weimar, hush'd of look and staid,
As if she knew the passing stranger came,
Drawn to her by the splendour and the fame
Of her two mighty sons, whose dust is laid
...
And with the murmur of the Rhine will come
Those legends which have flung, as from a sky
We cannot see but with the inner eye,
...
The splendid demon with the lurid eyes,
Wherein, as when a serpent bites its coil
Nearing its death—hate having felt its foil,
Turns back upon itself before it dies.
...
Thou gazest and the picture fades away
Like visions after sleep. But unto thee
One thing remaineth which thou still canst see,
...
A spirit is singing a song somewhere,
As I go out to my work—
Singing aloud in the open air
And wherever echoes lurk.
...
I push the little gate aside,
I leave behind all human pride,
For here the grass is waving wide.
...
The dead man in the chamber dim
Lay, with the silence over him.
...
'So you knew Dalley that used to drive
That spanking old engine—fifty-five;'
Knew him? why, Dalley was my mate,
He died beside me upon the plate.
...
The way that it came about was this—
I was stoker for over two years to Bill,
But do as we might something went amiss
With that creaking confounded engine still.
...
No, the railway wasn't a fitting place
For a man like him, at least one in his case;
But though deaf and dumb, he was quick of the eye,
...