Schiller: “The Rider’s Song”

Excerpt, “Ballads from the German.” Translator: Henry Inglis. 1864

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“The Rider’s Song”

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Mount, brothers, mount!  To the field – to the field!

To the battle of Freedom away!

Still in the battle the Man is revealed;

And his pulses still beat in the fray:

Spirit and hand in the fight are his own;

And he stands in his manhood alone.

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Earth is a dungeon, and Freedom hath fled,

Here are none but the lord and the slave;

Nations of impotent cowards are led

By the crafty and not by the brave:

He who the skeleton monarch can scan

With a warrior’s glance — is a man.

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For him is no fear, for him is no care;

Life’s disquiets, he casts them away;

Rides to the battle to do and to dare –

Or tomorrow he falls, or today:

Fate may decree him tomorrow’s delay;

Let him labor for Freedom today.

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Blest is the lot of the warrior bold!

He is free from the husbandman’s toil,

The earthworm that creeps and drudges for gold,

With his spade in the festering soil;

In digging and delving his moments are passed,

And he digs his own graves at the last.

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Godlike the man on his courser of fire!

Of the race of the Centaurs is he!

Unbidden he comes in his grim attire

To the hall of wedding revelry:

Short is his wooing and scanty his gold;

But the loved one he bears from the fold.

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Why weeps the pale maiden?  Why doth she wail?

Let the rover go – the rover go;

Inconstant is he from the summer gale;

He hath no home on the earth below;

He is born by fate on the billow’s crest;

The foot of the soldier knows no rest.

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Loosen your swords at the trumpeter’s peal!

For the riders who wield them – til well!

When brothers are bound by heart-strings of steel,

Earth will tremble at victory’s kneel;

No scepter is held so high or so fast,

But the rider will reach it at last.

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Mount the war-horses and tighten the reins;

Bare your swords and your breasts to the foe;

Come with the life-blood of youth in your veins,

While the flood tide is yet at the flow;

But if there be aught in your courage untrue,

To freedom and life bid adieu.

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