Here stump we round, deserted orphans, and with tears each other see,-- Are waiting for our marching orders hence, to be again with thee. Yes, Father, only could we buy thee, with our blood, by Heaven, yes,-- We Invalides, forlorn detachment, straight through death would storming press! When the German princes issued to their subjects unlimited orders for Constitutions, to be filled up and presented after the domination of Napoleon was destroyed, all classes hastened, fervid with hope and anti-Gallic feeling, to offer their best men for the War of Liberation. Then the poets took again their rhythm from an air vibrating with the cannon's pulse. There was Germanic unity for a while, fed upon expectation and the smoke of successful fields. Most of the songs of this period have been already translated. Ruckert, in a series of verses which he called "Sonnets in Armor," gave a fine scholarly expression to the popular desires. Here is his exultation over the Battle of Leipsic:-- Can there no song Roar with a might Loud as the fight Leipsic's region along? Three days and three nights, No moment of rest, And not for a jest, Went thundering the fights. Three days and three nights Leipsic Fair kept: Frenchmen who pleasured There with an iron yardstick were measured, Bringing the reckoning with them to rights. Three days and all night A battue of larks the Leipsicker make; Every haul a hundred he takes, A thousand each flight. Ha! it is good, Now that the Russian can boast no longer He alone of us is stronger To slake his steppes with hostile blood. Not in the frosty North alone, But here in Meissen, Here at Leipsic on the Pleissen, Can the French be overthrown. Shallow Pleissen deep is flowing; Plains upheaving, The dead receiving, Seem to mountains for us growing. They will be our mountains never, But this fame Shall be our claim On the rolls of earth forever. What all this amounted to, when the German people began to send in their constitutional _cartes-blanches_, is nicely taken off by Hoffman von Fallersleben, in this mock war-song, published in 1842:-- _All sing_. Hark to the beating drum! See how the people come! Flag in the van! We follow, man for man. Rouse, rouse From earth and house! Ye women and children, good night! Forth we hasten, we hasten to the fight, With God for our King and Fatherland. _A night-patrol of 1813 sings_. O God! and why, and why, For princes' whim, renown, and might, To the fight? For court-flies and other crows, To blows? For the nonage of our folk, Into smoke? For must-war-meal and class-tax, To thwacks? For privilege and censordom-- Hum-- Into battle without winking? But--I was thinking-- _All sing_. Hark to the heating drum! See how the people come! Flag in the van! We follow, man for man: In battle's roar The time is o'er To ask for reasons,--hear, the drum Again is calling,--tum--tum--tum,-- With God for King and Fatherland.