Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 9, 2025
"Most true," replied Krantz, "and now to my history. "My father was not born, or originally a resident, in the Hartz Mountains; he was the serf of an Hungarian nobleman, of great possessions, in Transylvania; but, although a serf, he was not by any means a poor or illiterate man.
"A bitter winter it was when these verses were composed by the side of my sister, in our lodgings, at a draper's house, in the romantic imperial town of Goslar, on the edge of the Hartz forest. So severe was the cold of this winter, that when we passed out of the parlour warmed by the stove our cheeks were struck by the air as by cold iron. I slept in a room over a passage that was not ceiled.
Then they explored the Hartz, climbed the Brocken, and there, among the clouds, discussed the adventures of Faust and his kinsman, Manfred. Anon, the arrival of the Grahams disturbed the quiet of Eugene's life, and, far away from the picturesque haunts of Heidelberg students, he wandered with them over Italy, Switzerland, and France.
But even the contents of many of his poems are capable of giving a certain sense of it. Here, for instance, is a poem in which he makes his profession of faith to an innocent beautiful soul, a sort of Gretchen, the child of some simple mining people having their hut among the pines at the foot of the Hartz Mountains, who reproaches him with not holding the old articles of the Christian creed:
"`Ha ha! replied the hunter, `would you harm a potent spirit of the Hartz Mountains. Poor mortal, who must needs wed a were wolf. "`Out, demon! I defy thee and thy power. "`Yet shall you feel it; remember your oath your solemn oath never to raise your hand against her to harm her. "`I made no compact with evil spirits.
At last he drew the sword and went down to force it. After a year of fighting Tilly and Wallenstein, the Emperor's great generals, he met the former in a decisive battle at Lutter-am-Baremberg. King Christian's army was beaten and put to rout. He himself fled bareheaded through the forests of the Hartz Mountains, pursued by the enemy's horsemen.
The next day the forest itself was entered, when "the bright blue sky, the heavenly air, the exquisite tints," gave a crowning charm to its beauties. The road lay through green glades which occasionally commanded views so remote as those of the Hartz Mountains, to Jagersruh, a hunting-lodge on a height "among stately firs that look like cedars."
It was very ticklish to change hands anyway, and would have complicated the position of each one. So they were separated. He was with me day by day until he was wounded. He moved in a dream without her a good boy, Colonel and a good girl but war. I say, we learned something about men, you and I long ago " Herr Hartz now beamed. "We learned it," he breathed.
"'Ha ha! replied the hunter, 'would you harm a potent spirit of the Hartz Mountains. Poor mortal, who must needs wed a weir wolf. "'Out demon! I defy thee and thy power. "'Yet shall you feel it; remember your oath your solemn oath never to raise your hand against her to harm her. "'I made no compact with evil spirits.
Amid a dead and awful silence I beheld before me in the nineteenth century, and in the civilized capital of France such a machine for secret murder by suffocation as might have existed in the worst days of the Inquisition, in the lonely inns among the Hartz Mountains, in the mysterious tribunals of Westphalia!
Word Of The Day
Others Looking