Hengist and Horsa

Hengist and Horsa

Hengist was coarser than Horsa

And Horsa was awfully coarse.

Horsa drank whiskey,

Told tales that were risqué,

But Hengist was in a divorce.

 

Horsa grew coarser and coarser,

But Hengist was coarse all his life.

That reprobate Horsa

Drank tea from a saucer,

But Hengist ate peas with his knife.

 

-Desmond Carter

 

 

Search the Internet for Hengist and Horsa and you end up with some informative article about the possibly mythical German brothers who led an army of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes to invade England in the 5th Century AD. They did what they could to bring us English. Geoffrey of Monmouth writes:

"About this time there landed in certain parts of Kent three vessels of the type we call longships. They were full of armed warriors and there were two brothers named Hengist and Horsa in command of them."

The brothers show up in Bede as well. 

But did I care about that? I did not! I was looking for Desmond Carter's inspired bit of nonsense about the brothers, and it was harder to find on the Internet than it should have been. Carter was a British lyricist who worked with composers such as George Gershwin and Ivor Novello. He also wrote the English lyrics to Gloomy Sunday, covered by Billie Holiday and Paul Robeson.

 

And why did this occur to me? Well, the Other Reader and I were out for lunch, and I ordered the fish and chips, with peas, which are in season for us, and there I was pushing peas on to my fork with my knife--not, quite!, eating peas with my knife--and while I couldn't remember the rest of the poem, I did manage, "But Hengist ate peas with his knife..."

 

Wanderer's Nightsong (#poem)

 

Wanderer's Night-song

O'er all the hilltops

Is quiet now,

In all the tree-tops

Hearest thou

Hardly a breath;

The birds are asleep in the trees:

Wait, soon like these,

Thou too shall rest.

 

-Goethe (tr. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

 

 

I just finished A. N. Wilson's recent biography of Goethe (pretty good!) and came across this poem. Goethe wrote the poem on the wall of a gamekeeper's hut in the mountains of Thuringia, Germany in 1776. He mentioned it in a letter, and friends copied it out and later published it without his approval. He never thought to include it in one of his own books, but now it's sometimes considered the most perfect lyric in German and was set to music by Schubert.

 

Six months before his death with his health failing, Goethe insisted he could still climb the mountain to where the hut was, and did, and read the poem he'd written there fifty years before.

 

Another version, by John Whaley, an English translator who died in 2005:

 

Over all of the hills

Peace comes anew,

The woodland stills

All through;

The birds make no sound on the bough,

Wait a while,

Soon now,

Peace comes to you.

 

-Goethe (tr. John Whaley)

 

And warum nicht? The German:

 

Wandrers Nachtlied

 

Über allen Gipfeln

Ist Ruh,

In allen Wipfeln

Spürest du

Kaum einen Hauch;

Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.

Warte nur! Balde

Ruhest du auch.

 

-Goethe

Heinrich Heine's The Lotus Flower

The Lotus Flower

The lotus flower is frightened

By the sun's majestic light;

With downcast eyes and dreaming

She longs for the quiet of night.

 

The moon, he is her lover,

He wakes her with silver rays;

To him she unveils her friendly

Devoted flower face.

 

She blooms and sparkles, gazing

Silently up to his glow;

In fragrance she weeps and trembles

From rapture of love and woe.

 

-Heinrich Heine (tr. Ernst Feise)

 

Heine was a German poet, born in 1797 in Düsseldorf, when the revolutionary French forces occupied the town. His parents were Jewish. In 1831, he moved as a political exile to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life. In 1848, he suffered a paralytic stroke and was confined to bed (his 'mattress-grave' he called it) from then until his death in 1856, but still writing all the time.

 

The German:

 

Die Lotosblume

 

Die Lotosblume ängstigt

Sich vor der Sonne Pracht,

Und mit gesenktem Haupte

Erwartet sie träumend die Nacht.

 

Der Mond, der ist ihr Buhle,

Er weckt sie mit seinem Licht,

Und ihm entschleiert sie freundlich

Ihr frommes Blumengesicht.

 

Sie blüht und glüht und leuchtet

Und starret stumm in die Höh;

Sie duftet und weinet und zittert

Vor Liebe und Liebesweh.

 

-Heinrich Heine