Upon my appetite. I ate Some omelets, together with bacon; And as they were salt, some Rhenish wine Was by me also taken.
The Rhenish wine gleams like very gold, When quaff’d from out a green rummer; If thou drink’st a few pints in excess, ’twill give Thy nose the colour of summer.
So sweet a tickling attacks the nose, One’s sensations grow fonder and fonder; It drove me out in the darkening night, Through the echoing streets to wander.
The houses of stone upon me gazed, As if wishing to tell me the mysteries And legends of times that have long gone by,-- The town of Cologne’s old histories.
Yes, here it was that the clergy of yore Dragg’d on their pious existence; Here ruled the dark men, whose story’s preserved By Ulrich von Hutten’s[43] assistance.
’Twas here that the nuns and monks once danced In mediæval gyrations, Here Cologne’s own Menzel, Hoogstraaten[44] by name, Wrote his bitter denunciations.
’Twas here that the flames of the funeral pile Both books and men once swallow’d; The bells rang merrily all the while, And Kyrie Eleison follow’d.
Stupidity here and spitefulness Like dogs in the street coquetted; In religious hatred the brood still exists, Though greatly to be regretted,
But see, where the moonlight yonder gleams, A form of a monstrous sort is! As black as the devil it rears its head,-- Cologne Cathedral in short ’tis.
’Twas meant a bastile of the spirit to be, And the cunning papists bethought them: “In this prison gigantic shall pine away German intellects, when we have caught them.”
Then Luther appear’d, and soon by his mouth A thundering “Halt!” was spoken. Since then the Cathedral no progress has made In building, the charm being broken.
It never was finish’d, and this is as well, For its very non-termination A monument makes it of German strength And Protestant reformation.
Ye Cathedral-Society’s members vain, With powerless hands have ye risen To continue the work that so long has been stopp’d, And complete the ancient prison.
O foolish delusion! In vain will ye shake The money-boxes so bootless, And beg of the Jews and heretics too,-- Your labour is idle and fruitless.
In vain will Liszt on behalf of the fund Make concerts all the fashion, And all in vain will a talented king Declaim with impetuous passion.