In answer to a suggestion of the _Pall Mall Gazette_ to meet Prince
Bismarck’s wish, the following epitaphs, among others, were received and
published:
He sowed his iron hail o’er many a field,
And dyed in the red the harvest seemed to be
The bloom and fruit of golden unity.
Now, Europe, wondering, sees the furrows yield.
Here, on the verge of Prussia’s border,
Moulder the bones of Prussia’s warder:
Sound may he sleep when the coming thunder
Shall rock his castle walls asunder.
If dust ye seek, and dust alone,
Prince Bismarck sleeps beneath this stone,
But if his soul you seek, depart!
His Germans keep that in their heart.
Behold the power of Europe in his grip:
On others’ blood he built an Empire’s throne;
Undaunted pride purchased a grievous slip;
Himself his God—his foes his very own.
Around this tomb hovers the spirit great,
Which for too brief a span did animate
The mighty frame that silent lies below,
Leaving this world to wonderment and woe.
Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, whose nod
The anxious nations watched, as of a god—
He forged an Empire, swayed it in its pride,
And then, to show that he was mortal, died.
I ruled as King, and not in vain,
I tamed the Austrian and the Dane,
I curbed proud France (for Europe’s good),
I placed our borders where she stood,
I made Germania One and Free,
I fell. I saw adversity.
Bismarck lies here. Early and late
He strove to make his country great.
Did he succeed? Let Sedan, Paris, tell;
But silence keep on how, himself, he fell.
Look kindly on this spot, here Bismarck lies.
Death’s kiss’d away the terror of his eyes.
And the brave heart by leisure has been made
A child’s, of which the world was once afraid;
Cleansed is the “blood”—the “iron’s” lost in love,
And now Earth’s Prince is crown’d a King above.
War’s fiery furnaces have fused the race of Teuton blood,
’Twas Bismarck fanned the blaze;
To strong Germania has been shaped the molten flood,
And Bismarck owns the praise.
To the immortal Founder
of the
Fatherland’s Unity
this
Monument is dedicated
by the
grateful Germans,
who will admiringly remember, for ever and ever,
his high, patriotic aims,
his unwavering steadfastness and purpose,
his indomitable energy and courage,
and the eminently practical means by which he realized
the national aspirations.
What would Germany be without him?
A mere geographical expression.
His name will go down to Posterity as the Greatest
of his nation.
_A Husbandman_
The following lines on an agriculturist were written by Canada’s lyrist,
C. G. D. Roberts:
He who would start and rise
Before the crowing cocks—
No more he lifts his eyes,
Whoever knocks.
He who before the stars
Would call the cattle home—
They wait about the bars
For him to come.
Him at whose hearty calls
The farmstead woke again,
The horses in their stalls
Expect in vain.
Busy, and blithe, and bold,
He labored for the morrow;
The plow his hands would hold
Rusts in the furrow.
His fields he had to leave,
His orchards cool and dim;
The clods he used to cleave
Now cover him.
But the green, growing things
Lean kindly to his sleep;
White roots and wandering strings—
Closer they creep.
Because he loved them long
And with them bore his part,
Tenderly now they throng
About his heart.
The _Vienna Freie Fresse_, found in Austrian cemeteries some curious
epitaphs, translated as follows:
On a carter killed in a runaway:
“The road to eternity is not long. He started at 7 o’clock and arrived
at 8.”
On a man of letters:
“Here lies the best man in the world. He deprived himself of sleep to
bestow it upon others.”
One tomb bears a bas-relief depicting a peasant impaled on the horns of
a bull. Below is the inscription:
“It was a bull’s horn that sent me to Heaven. I died in a moment,
leaving wife and child. Oh, bull, bull! To think that I owe to you
everlasting repose!
This does not speak well for the married life of F. K.:
“Here rests in God F. K., who lived 26 years as a man and 37 years as a
husband.”