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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


THE CONFLICT: 6. THE REAL GERMANY by PERCY MACKAYE

First Line: BISMARCK - OR RAPT BEETHOVEN WITH HIS DREAMS
Last Line: OF BURIED GUNS GIVES BIRTH TO GERMANY.
Subject(s): AMBITION; ART & ARTISTS; BISMARK, OTTO VON (1815-1898); MUSIC & MUSICIANS; PHILOSOPHY & PHILOSOPHERS; WORLD WAR I; FIRST WORLD WAR;

Bismarck — or rapt Beethoven with his dreams:
Ah, which was blind? Or which bespoke his race? —
That breed which nurtured Heine's haunting grace,
And Goethe, mastering Olympic themes
Of meditation, Mozart's golden gleams,
And Leibnitz charting realms of time and space,
Great-hearted Schiller, and that fairy brace
Of brothers who first trailed the goblin streams.

Bismarck for these builded an iron tomb,
And clanged the door, and turned a kaiser's key;
And simple folk that once danced merrily
Their May-ring rites, march now in roaring gloom
Toward that renascent dawn when the black womb
Of buried guns gives birth to Germany.



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