O liberales clerics
Nu merchet rehte wi dem si
Date: vobis dabitur
Ir suelt lan offen iwer tuer
Vagis et egentibus
So gewinnet ihr das himelhus,
Et in perenni gaudio
Alsus also, alsus also!
Pfarrherr, du kuehler, oeffne dein' Thor,
Fahrende Schueler stehen davor.
Fahrende Schueler, unstete Kind,
Singer und Spieler, wirbliger Wind.
Parson Sir Prudence, open your gate!
Travelling students your welcome await!
Travelling scholar, whimsical child!
Singer and stroller, the wind-whirling wild.
Iron throats for drinking--bellies like fires,
Gold souls unshrinking--which no one desires,
Thin garments sporting--weather so raw,
Ah--and our courting--on hay and in straw!
Parson, Sir Prudence, open your gate!
Travelling students your welcome await!
Suabia, Franconia have given us food,
Sans ceremonie--an all eating brood;
Fed us, rapacious, God keep them from harm!
Like the voracious and wild locust swarm,
What we've o'erpowered--once fertile and fair,
All is devoured--shorn barren and bare.
Parson Sir Prudence, open your gate!
Travelling students your welcome await!
Makest not thy oven free, miserly owl,
We'll haul thee to Coventry straight by the cowl.
Pull off your breeches, the shoes from your feet,
Hang them like fitches out here in the street;
He who would own it and do us a hurt,
He must atone it in stockings and shirt.
Parson Sir Prudence, open your tower!
Travelling students your bars will o'erpower!
Ho, ho, heiadihoh!
Avoy, avoy, alez avanz!
Alsus also, alsus alsus also!
Ho ho heiadihoh, hoh, ho, ho!
THE CLOISTER CELLAR MASTER'S
SUMMER MORNING SONG.
Hu weh! mir ist des Tages bang!
Tret ich hinaus in den schweigenden Bergwald
Den kaum das erste Fruehlicht erhellet,
Wehe! noch lagert die Hitze von Gestern
Ueber versengtetn Moos und Gestraeuch.
Ah me! what a dull day it is!
If I go out in the wood on the mountain
When the tops shine in the earliest sunlight,
Ah! there still lingers the dry heat of yestern
On the singed mosses and withering shrubs,
And all around me come midges by thousands,
Stinging and bold,
As if the hot sun were sprinkling in sparkles.
Wide gaping crevices split the earth round us;
Grass dries to hay before they can mow it,
And in the air sweeps
_Dust_ ....
Ah me! what a dull day it is!
If I seek by the trunk of the giant-grown beech-tree
A cool place to sit on the rough-hewn stone bench,
Where by the eight-cornered slab of the table
The brethren merrily rest in the forest,
Ah! there the stone rays a heat that is horrible,
Cannot endure me!
All because I, when just seated, so nimbly
Jumped in a hurry.
Grasshoppers sit, sound asleep, by the road-side
Quiet as can be.
_Dull_ ....
Ah me! what a dull day it is!
These are the times, hey, when people and cattle
Are scorching red-hot like the irons in a smithy!
Pour on them drops or long floods of cold water,
All would be swallowed and nothing be quenched.
Ah!--hey!--the matin bell still is a-ringing,
And I'm seized with a powerful yearning already
To go to the cloister, and down to the cellar!
Whether I'll tarry there steadily drinking
Until the night comes,
Or a loud clattering thunder in heaven
Breaks up this wearisome terrible heat,
I don't know,
Only my thirst is
_Dreadful_ ....
Ah me! what a dull day it is.