...Twenty years ago I was a lad, and what overflowing enthusiasm would I then have lavished upon Uhland! At that time I could better appreciate his merits than now; we were then more akin in modes of thought and feeling. But so much has happened since then! What then seemed to me so grand: all that chivalry and Catholicism; those cavaliers that hack and hew at each other in knightly tournaments; those gentle squires and virtuous dames of high degree; the Norseland heroes and minnesingers; the monks and nuns; ancestral tombs thrilling with prophetic powers; colourless passion, dignified by the high-sounding title of renunciation, and set to the accompaniment of tolling bells; a ceaseless whining of the Miserere; how distasteful all that has become to me since then! But once, it was, oh! so different. How often have I sat on the ruins of the old castle at Düsseldorf on the Rhine, declaiming the loveliest of all Uhland's poems:-- A wandering shepherd, young and fair, Beneath the royal castle strayed; And when the princess saw him there, Love's longing thrilled the maid. And then with accents sweet, she said, "Oh! would that I might come to thee! How white the lambkins there; how red The flowerets on the lea." The youth made answer from below, "If thou would'st but come down to me! How rosy red thy cheeks do glow, How white those arms I see." And every morn, with silent pain, He drove his flock the castle by, And gazed aloft, until again His love appeared on high. "Oh, welcome! welcome! princess sweet!" His joyous tones rang bright and clear. Then softly she in turn did greet, "Kind thanks, my shepherd dear." Cold winter fled, spring came again, The flowerets blossomed far and near. The shepherd sought his love;--in vain! No more did she appear. "Oh, welcome! welcome! princess fair!" His words were mournful now, and drear. A spirit voice rang through the air, "Farewell, my shepherd dear." And as I sat on the ruins of the old castle and recited this poem, at times I heard the water-fays of the Rhine mockingly, and with comic pathos, take up my refrain, and from amidst the sighing and the moaning of the river that ran below I could hear in faint tones---- "A spirit voice ring through the air, 'Farewell, my shepherd dear.'"