All honor due to him I gladly pay, But must deny the right he would usurp.
The sore displeasure of its monarch rests Upon our land, and every true man's heart Is full of sadness for the grievous wrongs We suffer from our tyrants. Thou alone Art all unmoved amid the general grief. Abandoning thy friends, thou tak'st thy stand Beside thy country's foes, and, as in scorn Of our distress, pursuest giddy joys, Courting the smiles of princes all the while Thy country bleeds beneath their cruel scourge.
The land is sore oppress'd, I know it, uncle. But why? Who plunged it into this distress? A word, one little easy word, might buy Instant deliverance from all our ills, And win the good will of the Emperor. Woe unto those who seal the people's eyes, And make them adverse to their country's good-- The men, who, for their own vile selfish ends, Are seeking to prevent the Forest States From swearing fealty to Austria's House, As all the countries round about have done. It fits their humor well, to take their seats Amid the nobles on the Herrenbank;[46] They'll have the Kaiser for their lord, forsooth-- That is to say, they'll have no lord at all.
Must I hear this, and from thy lips, rash boy!
You urged me to this answer. Hear me out. What, uncle, is the character you've stoop'd To fill contentedly through life? Have you No higher pride than in these lonely wilds To be the Landamman or Banneret,[47] The petty chieftain of a shepherd race? How! Were it not a far more glorious choice, To bend in homage to our royal lord, And swell the princely splendors of his court, Than sit at home, the peer of your own vassals, And share the judgment-seat with vulgar clowns?
Ah, Uly, Uly; all too well I see, The tempter's voice has caught thy willing ear, And pour'd its subtle poison in thy heart.
Yes, I conceal it not. It doth offend My inmost soul, to hear the stranger's gibes, That taunt us with the name of "Peasant Nobles!" Think you the heart that's stirring here can brook, While all the young nobility around Are reaping honor under Habsburg's banner, That I should loiter, in inglorious ease, Here on the heritage my fathers left, And, in the dull routine of vulgar toil, Lose all life's glorious spring? In other lands Great deeds are done. A world of fair renown Beyond these mountains stirs in martial pomp. My helm and shield are rusting in the hall; The martial trumpet's spirit-stirring blast, The herald's call, inviting to the lists, Rouse not the echoes of these vales, where naught Save cowherd's horn and cattle bell is heard, In one unvarying dull monotony.
