And yet my whole heart clings to thee, Gray city by the sea; And e'er the spell of youth for me Doth smiling rest on thee, on thee Gray city by the sea. FOOTNOTES: [2] Translator: Margarete Münsterberg. THE HEATH[3] It is so quiet here. There lies The heath in noon's warm sunshine gold. A gleam of light, all rosy, flies And hovers round the mounds of old. The herbs are blooming; fragrance fair Now fills the bluish summer air. The beetles rush through bush and trees, In little golden coats of mail; And on the heather-bells the bees Alight on all its branches frail. From out the grass there starts a throng Of larks and fills the air with song. A lonely house, half-crumbled, low: The farmer, in the doorway bent, Stands watching in the sunlight's glow The busy bees in sweet content. And on a stone near by his boy Is carving pipes from reeds with joy. Scarce trembling through the peace of noon The town-clock strikes--from far, it seems. The old man's eye-lids droop right soon, And of his honey crops he dreams.-- The sounds that tell our time of stress Have not yet reached this loneliness. FOOTNOTES: [3] Translator: Margarete Münsterberg. CONSOLATION[4] Let come to me whatever may, While you are with me it is day. Though in the world I wander far, My home is ever--where you are. Your face is all in all to me, The future's frown I do not see. FOOTNOTES: [4] Translator: Charles Wharton Stork. WILHELM RAABE BY EWALD EISERHARDT, PH.D. Assistant Professor of German, University of Rochester Wilhelm Raabe was born on the eighth of September, 1831, in the little town of Eschershausen in the Duchy of Braunschweig. He received his schooling at the Gymnasiums in Holzminden and Wolfenbüttel; from 1849-53 he was employed in a bookstore in Magdeburg; then, while living with his mother in Wolfenbüttel, he prepared for the university, and later went to Berlin, where he studied chiefly history, philosophy, and literature. After the success of his first book, _Records of Sparrow Lane_ (1857), he turned entirely to authorship. In 1862 he married and moved to Stuttgart, where he remained till 1870. From then on until his death in 1910 he lived in Braunschweig. Raabe was an extraordinarily productive writer, yet during the last ten years of his life he entirely gave up all literary activity, and left his last work, _Old Folks in the Old Home_, unfinished.