THE EXILE'S DIRGE.[1]
Fear no more the heat o' the sun,
Nor the furious Winter's rages,
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Cymbeline.
I attended a funeral where there were a number of the German settlers present. After I had performed such service as is usual on similar occasions, a most venerable-looking old man came forward, and asked me if I were willing that they should perform some of their peculiar rites. He opened a very ancient version of Luther's Hymns, and they all began to sing, in German, so loud that the woods echoed the strain. There was something affecting in the singing of these ancient people, carrying one of their brethren to his last home, and using the language and rites which they had brought with them over the sea from the Vaterland, a word which often occurred in this hymn. It was a long, slow, and mournful air, which they sung as they bore the body along; the words "mein Gott," "mein Bruder" and "Vaterland," died away in distant echoes amongst the woods. I shall long remember that funeral hymn—Flint's Recollections of the Valley of the Mississippi.
There went a dirge through the forest's gloom.
—An exile was borne to a lonely tomb.
- ↑ Published in the Winter's Wreath for 1830.
