Three students they hied them over the Rhine,
And there they turned in at a landlady’s sign.
“Landlady, hast thou good beer and wine?
And where is that beauteous daughter of thine?”
“My beer and wine are fresh and clear;
My daughter she lies on the funeral-bier.”
And when they did enter the inner room,
There lay she all white in a shrine of gloom.
The first from her face the veil he took,
And, gazing upon her with sorrowful look,
“Oh, wert thou living, thou fairest maid,
’Tis thee I would love from this hour,” he said.
The second let down on the face that slept
The veil, and turned him away and wept:
“Alas for thee there on the funeral-bier!
For thee I have loved full many a year.”
The third, he lifted again the veil,
And kissed her upon the mouth so pale:
“I loved thee before, I love thee to-day,
And I will love thee for ever and aye!”
The last line, “Und werde dich lieben in ewigkeit,” would be more
correctly rendered, “And I will love thee _in_ eternity.” And we are
equally aware that our “landlady’s sign” is objectionable, as the
original is simply, “They turned in there to a landlady’s.” But it would
be hard to render it otherwise without losing the quadruple rhyme, which
has a certain mournful elegance. ‘The Landlady’s Daughter’ naturally
leads us to ‘The Goldsmith’s Daughter.’ In this poem we must not suppose
that the hero and heroine meet for the first time. The maiden has fallen
in love with the knight, her superior in station, but scarcely dares
even confess it to herself, till the knight agreeably surprises her by
adorning her as his bride, taking her acceptance for granted. We would
not spoil the romance by hinting that it may not have been an uncommon
case in the middle ages for young noblemen of small fortune to seek
their brides from the rich _bourgeoisie_ of the Free Towns.