Go, maiden, fill again our glasses! While, with anointed eyes, we scan The blouse Teutonic lads and lasses, The Saxon—Pruss—Bohemian, The sanded floor, the cross-beamed gables, The ancient Flemish paintings queer, The rusty cup-stains on the tables, The terraced kegs of Lager Bier. And is it Göttingen, or Gotha, Or Munich’s ancient Wagner Brei, Where each Bavarian drinks his quota, And swings a silver tankard high? Or some ancestral Gast-Haus lofty In Nuremburg—of famous cheer When Hans Sachs lived, and where, so oft, he Sang loud the praise of Lager Bier? For even now some curious glamour Has brought about a misty change! Things look, as in a moonlight dream, or Magician’s mirror, quaint and strange. Some weird, phantasmagoric notion Impels us backward many a year, And far across the northern ocean, To Fatherlands of Lager Bier. As odd a throng I see before us As ever haunted Brocken’s height, Carousing, with unearthly chorus, On any wild Walpurgis-night; I see the wondrous art-creations! In proper guise they all appear, And, in their due and several stations, Unite in drinking Lager Bier. I see in yonder nook a trio: There’s Doctor Faust, and, by his side, Not half so love-distraught as Io, Is gentle Margaret, heaven-eyed; That man in black beyond the waiter— I know him by his fiendish leer— Is Mephistophiles, the traitor! And how he swigs his Lager Bier! Strange if great Goethe should have blundered, Who says that Margaret slipt and fell In Anno Domini Sixteen Hundred, Or thereabout; and Faustus,—well, We won’t deplore his resurrection, Since Margaret is with him here, But, under her serene protection, May boldly drink our Lager Bier. That bare-legged gypsy, small and lithy, Tanned like an olive by the sun, Is little Mignon; sing us, prithee, _Kennst du das Land_, my pretty one! Ah, no! she shakes her southern tresses, As half in doubt and more in fear; Perhaps the elvish creature guesses We’ve had too much of Lager Bier. There moves, full-bodiced, ripe, and human, With merry smiles to all who come, Karl Schæffer’s wife,—the very woman Whom Rubens drew his Venus from! But what a host of tricksome graces Play round our fairy Undine here, Who pouts at all the bearded faces, And, laughing, brings the Lager Bier. “Sit down, nor chase the vision farther, You’re tied to Yankee cities still!” I hear you, but so much the rather Should Fancy travel where she will. Yet let the dim ideals scatter; One puff, and lo! they disappear; The comet, next, or some such matter, We’ll talk above our Lager Bier.