Page:The poems of Edmund Clarence Stedman, 1908.djvu/118

POEMS OF MANHATTAN Some weird, phantasmagoric notion

Impels us backward many a year,

And far across the northern ocean,

To Fatherlands of Lager Bier.

As odd a throng I see before us

As ever haunted Brocken's height,

Carousing, with unearthly chorus,

On any wild Walpurgis-night;

I see the wondrous art-creations!

In proper guise they all appear,

And, in their due and several stations,

Unite in drinking Lager Bier.

I see in yonder nook a trio:

There's Doctor Faust, and, by his side,

Not half so love-distraught as Io,

Is gentle Margaret, heaven-eyed;

That man in black beyond the waiter—

I know him by his fiendish leer—

Is Mephistophiles, the traitor!

And how he swigs his Lager Bier!

Strange if great Goethe should have blundered,

Who says that Margaret slipt and fell

In Anno Domini Sixteen Hundred,

Or thereabout; and Faustus,—well,

We won't deplore his resurrection,

Since Margaret is with him here,

But, under her serene protection,

May boldly drink our Lager Bier.

That bare-legged gypsy, small and lithy,

Tanned like an olive by the sun,

Is little Mignon; sing us, prithee,

Kennst Du das Land, my pretty one! 88