doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.

I see myself now at the end of my journey; my toilsome days are ended. I
am going now to see that Head that was crowned with thorns, and that
Face that was spit upon for me.

I have formerly lived by hearsay and faith, but now I go where I shall
live by sight, and shall be with him in whose company I delight myself.

I have loved to hear my Lord spoken of, and wherever I have seen the
print of his shoe in the earth, there I have coveted to set my foot too.

His name has been to me as a civet-box, yea, sweeter than all perfumes.
His voice to me has been most sweet, and his countenance I have more
desired than they that have most desired the light of the sun. His Word
I did use to gather for my food, and for antidotes against my faintings.
He has held me, and I have kept me from mine iniquities; yea, my steps
hath he strengthened in his way.

Now while he was thus in discourse, his countenance changed, his strong
man bowed under him, and after he had said, Take me, for I come unto
thee, he ceased to be seen of them.

But glorious it was to see how the open region was filled with horses
and chariots, with trumpeters and pipers, with singers and players on
stringed instruments, to welcome the pilgrims as they went up, and
followed one another in at the beautiful gate of the city.

GOTTFRIED AUGUST BUeRGER

(1747-1794)

The ballad of 'Lenore,' upon which Buerger's fame chiefly rests, was
published in 1773. It constituted one of the articles in that
declaration of independence which the young poets of the time were
formulating, and it was more than a mere coincidence that in the same
year Herder wrote his essay on 'Ossian' and the 'Songs of Ancient
Peoples,' and Goethe unfurled the banner of a new time in 'Goetz von
Berlichingen.' The artificial and sentimental trivialities of the
pigtail age were superseded almost at a stroke, and the petty formalism
under which the literature of Germany was languishing fell about the
powdered wigs of its professional representatives. The new impulse came
from England. As in France, Rousseau, preaching the gospel of a return
to nature, found his texts in English writers, so in Germany the poets
who inaugurated the classic age derived their chief inspiration from the
wholesome heart of England. It was Shakespeare that inspired Goethe's
'Goetz'; Ossian and the old English and Scotch folk-songs were Herder's
theme; and Percy's 'Reliques