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The "Wacht am Rhein" made a half-hearted effort to be present, but in the night we had the Emperor's own "Sang an Aegir," stuck in the middle of a Wagner programme. Beyond this, compliment could scarcely go. This brazen air was the one jar on the poetry of a spectacle possible only in Venice. Imagine it!

Archer going on to the next. It was Keler Beler's "Am Schoenen Rhein" they were playing at the moment, with its sweet, weird, luring, mournful, warning Lorelei motif dominating in the waltz measure, and, with parted lips and clinging to her father's side, Lilian stood close to the window and looked and listened, saying not one word. There were but three couples dancing at the moment.

A deep solemnity fell upon the masses of spectators and the crowd fell into rank to march to the Royal Palace, from a window of which King Ludwig spoke words of comfort and inspiration. Still singing the 'Wacht am Rhein, this river of humanity flowed on to the 'Englischen Garten, at the corner of which stands the Austrian Legation.

Fehrbellin is an inconsiderable Town still standing in those peaty regions, some five-and-thirty miles northwest of Berlin; and had for ages plied its poor Ferry over the oily-looking, brown, sluggish stream called Rhin, or Rhein in those parts, without the least notice from mankind, till this fell out.

At intervals we heard the captain speaking with great force and enthusiasm, the hurrahs of the men, an occasional "Vaterland, Vaterland," and again and ever, "Die Wacht am Rhein." August 26th, Wednesday. One is a hardware merchant en civil and has a brown beard and the asthma; the other is a lawyer, with big, blinking eyes and they both looked as if they hated war.

"Soldiers marching up the street, They keep the time; They look sublime! Hear them play Die Wacht am Rhein! They call them Schneider's Band. Tra la la la, la!" The length of Main Street and all the Square resounded with the rattle of vehicles of every kind. Since earliest dawn they had been pouring into the village, a long procession on every country road.

As with their bands playing, whilst they themselves sang the "Wacht am Rhein" in chorus, they marched up the Champs Elysees on their way back to Versailles, those of their comrades who were still billeted in the houses came to the balconies with as many lighted candles as they could carry.

In Urania: Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1821, Graf von Loebcn published his "Loreley: Eine Sage vom Rhein." The following ballad introduces the saga in prose. Heine's ballad is set opposite for the sake of comparison. The following saga then relates how an old hunter sings this song to a young man in a boat on the Rhine, warning him against the allurements of the Lorelei on the rock above.

The same events inspired Max Schneckenburger's Wacht am Rhein, which at the time could not compete in popularity with Becker's poem, but in later years has quite supplanted it as a permanent national song.

On his way to the office one afternoon Larry found himself held up by a long procession of young German reservists singing with the utmost vigour and with an unmistakable note of triumph the German national air, "Die Wacht Am Rhein," and that newer song which embodied German faith and German ambition, "Deutschland Uber Alles."