Fortune has fled, and void is my purse, My friends have left for better for worse, Extinguish’d is each sunny ray, Around me the gnats no longer play; My friends and the gnats together Have gone with the sunny weather. Beside my bed in the winter night Old Care as my nurse sits bolt upright; She wears a habit that’s white enough, A bonnet black, and takes her snuff. The box is harshly creaking, As the woman a pinch is seeking. I often dream that the happy time Of bliss has return’d, and May’s young prime, And friendship, and all the gnats as well,-- When creaks the snuffbox,--and, sad to tell, The bubble is straightway breaking, While the nurse her snuff is taking. 15. TO THE ANGELS. This is dread Thanatos indeed! He comes upon his pale-white steed. I hear its tread, I hear its trot, The dusky horseman spares me not; He tears me from Matilda’s fond embraces,-- This thought of woe all other thoughts effaces. She was at once my child, my wife, And when I quit this mortal life An orphan’d widow will she be! I leave alone on earth’s wide sea The wife, the child, who, trusting to my guiding Slept on my bosom, careless and confiding. Ye angels in yon heavens so fair Receive my sobs, receive my prayer! When I am buried, from above Protect the woman that I love! Be shield and guardian to your own reflection, Grant my poor child Matilda your protection! By all the tears e’er shed by you Over men’s woes in pity true,-- By that dread word that priests alone Know, and ne’er breathe without a groan, By all your beauty, gentleness, perfection, Ye angels, grant Matilda your protection! 16. IN OCTOBER 1849. The weather now is calm and mild, And hush’d once more the tempest’s voice is, And Germany, that o’ergrown child, Once more in its old Christmas trees rejoices. Domestic joys we now pursue, All things beyond are false and hollow, And to the house’s gable too, Where once he built his nest, comes concord’s swallow. Forest and stream rest peacefully, With the soft moonlight o’er them playing; But, hark, a crack! A shot may’t be? It is perchance some friend whom they are slaying. Perchance with weapons in his hand, Some madcap they have overtaken; (All do not flight well understand Like Horace, who so nimbly saved his bacon). Crack, Crack! A fête, may I presume, Or fireworks in our Goethe’s honour? Or Sontag rising from the tomb Greeted, by rockets showering down upon her? And Francis Liszt appears again! He lives, he lies not dead and gory On some Hungarian battle-plain, Russian and Croat have not quench’d his glory.