Untitled - UBC Library - University of British Columbia

L 4lTJSHUMB
NEUSCHWANSTEIN
-- On
AIRY turrets, light and gleaming,
a castle, fairylike;
My quick soui wanders there, teeming
With wonder and delight.
High above the green and lowly vales
Where peasant toilers strive,
Facing blue heaven and snowy gales
The mad king built thee to survive;
Fairy, airy, peaked and gay
Bravely dancing, boldly glancing
In the solar heat and ray,
With thy many myriad steeples tow’ring
In eternal worship to the fiery deity;
Men bereft of all a human’s lot of gaiety,
Broke the rocks and sullen gave their all,
Ruined, unhappy, soulless men,
Praying, as they cursed, that thou mightst fall;
But thou perchest, now as then
With the mighty tree-tops as thy floor,
While they lie ‘neath the soil,
Their names, unknown to fame, for evermore,
Who made thee with their toil;
Ludwig, mad lover of all that was strange,
Great composers, fairy castles,
Was not content with thee, longing for change,
So new turrets rise on new summits,
And new hands bleed and new eyes swim
For very hopelessness;
Tears and blood all for a mad man’s whim
Who listens with eagerness.
While the storms and furies roar
Under a master’s hand;
He must have loved thee before
He made his next demand,
For thou wert the pearl of all his love,
Thou and mighty Wagner,
Thou with spires, like the other’s thunder, standing above
Lesser, more human things,
Symbol of Germany’s romantic past,
Placed, as if some hands divine
Aided those plebian ones who set thee firm and fast
On thy rocky base, Neuschwanstein.
—J.L. S.
I4I
I I