Nor are poets any more successful, when they propose to make camp-life and soldiers' feelings subjects for aesthetic consideration. Their lines are smooth, their images are spirited; but as well might the campaign itself have been conducted in the poet's study as its situations be deliberately transferred there to verse. The "Wallenstein's Camp" of Schiller is not poetry, but racy and sparkling pamphleteering. Its rhyming does not prevent it from belonging to the historical treatment of periods that are picturesque with many passions and interests, that go clad in jaunty regimental costumes, and require not to be idealized, but simply to be described. Goethe, in his soldier's song in "Faust," idealizes at a touch the rough work, the storming and marauding of the mediaeval _Lanzknecht;_ set to music, it might be sung by fine _dilettanti_ tenors in garrison, but would be stopped at any outpost in the field for want of the countersign. But when Goethe describes what he saw and felt in the campaign in France, with that lucid and observant prose, he reproduces an actual situation. So does Chamisso, in that powerful letter which describes the scenes in Hameln, when it was delivered to the French. But Chamisso has written a genuine soldier's song, which we intend to give. The songs of Körner are well known already in various English dresses. [2] [Footnote 2: See translations of Von Zedlitz's _Midnight Review_, of Follen's _Blücher's Ball_, of Freihgrath's _Death of Grabbe_, of Rückert's _Patriot's Lament_, of Arndt's _Field-Marshal Blücher_, of Pfeffel's _Tobacco-Pipe_, of Gleim's _War Song_, of Tegner's _Veteran_, (Swedish,) of Rahbek's _Peter Colbjornsen_, (Danish,) _The Death-Song of Regner Lodbrock_, (Norse,) and Körner's _Sword-Song_, in Mr. Longfellow's _Poets and Poetry of Europe_. See all of Körner's soldier songs well translated, the _Sword-Song_ admirably, by Rev. Charles T. Brooks, in _Specimens of Foreign Literature_, Vol. XIV. See, in Robinson's _Literature of Slavic Nations_, some Russian and Servian martial poetry.] But the early poetry which attempts the description of feats at arms which were points in the welfare of nations--when, for instance, Germany was struggling to have her middle class against the privileges of the barons--is more interesting than all the modern songs which nicely depict soldiers' moods. Language itself was fighting for recognition, as well as industrial and social rights. The verses mark successive steps of a people into consciousness and civilization. Some of this battle-poetry is worth preserving; a few camp-rhymes, also, were famous enough in their day to justify translating. Here are some relics, of pattern more or less antique, picked up from that field of Europe where so many centuries have met in arms. [3] [Footnote 3: Among such songs is one by Bayard Taylor, entitled _Annie Laurie_, which is of the very best kind.]