Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, BALLAD OF THE FOLLOWERS, by FRANZ WERFEL


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

BALLAD OF THE FOLLOWERS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I go, slowly vanishing, off through the snow
Last Line: Alone, but forever thing-ridden, brute-haunted.
Subject(s): Solitude; Loneliness


I go, slowly vanishing, off through the snow.
Are there hedges or sedge? I know not; I know,
Blowing bleak through the darkness, only the snow.

Alone through the blank dreary streets I must stride.
Alone? But I hear them on every side:
Behind and before and around me they glide.

Lurching before me, a dull drunken man
Who mumbles and stumbles along as he can,
Or is it an ailing, a perishing man?

To my right, to my left, dance a quick twinkling pair,
Two dogs, hardly glimpsed through the glimmering air,
But I feel now a leap, now the touch of rough hair.

And behind, is that creature a nag gone astray,
Who broke from his load and ran, panting, away?
Now he follows me with a long, weary neigh.

When I halt in my steps where the slow flakes slide,
Then all of my quiet companions bide,
Behind me, before me, and still on each side.

The sick man halts, he is choked with pain,
The dogs crouch close and there they remain.
I feel the hot breath of the horse like rain.

And again I take up my weary tramp,
And they gnash and they glide by my side in the damp,
Steady behind me, the four-footed stamp.

Snow-streets! Solitude! Only our tread.
The sick man may not go to his bed.
For the nag no stall, for the dogs no bread.

Through the long streets whose dim nooks never vaunted
Dawn, I must grope through the snowstorm undaunted.
Alone, but forever thing-ridden, brute-haunted.





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