Classic Poem

Beer-Meyer, Meyer-Beer,
What a tumult rends the air!
Are you really brought to birth
With the saviour of the earth,
With the promised man sublime?
Are you truly near your time?
Shall the masterpiece whose pain
Thirteen years convulsed your brain —
" Jan von Leyden, " child of anguish —
See the light where now you languish?

Yes, it is no canard merely
Of the journals; it is clearly
A delivery at last;
And the pangs are overpast,
And the honoured patient lies —
Heaven's peace upon his eyes —
On the bed bedewed with tears,
And the midwife, Gouin, nears,
Lays a napkin on the slack
Form as empty as a sack.
But a sudden crash and boom
Breaks the silence of the room!
It is Israel without,
And a thousand voices shout,
Thunder, " Hail! " with one accord
(Some untempted by reward),
" Hail to Meyer-Beer, hail!
He is great and shall prevail.
Hail to him, our master dear!
After labour long and drear,
After ages anguish-torn,
Now at last our prophet's born. "

From the crowd that cries and cheers
Steps a man, still young in years,
Called Herr Brandus — man of worth,
And a Prussian as to birth;
Modest-mannered (although shown
Every trick that can be known
By the rats' foe Schlesinger,
Beduin, music publisher,
Whom he has succeeded proudly),
On a drum he pummels loudly
With a boom and with a bang,
As when Miriam danced and sang
After Moses won the battle;
And he sings above the rattle:

" Sweat of art and genius holy,
Drop by drop, had gathered slowly
In the reservoir, and lay
Safely dammed until the day
When the sluice was opened wide.
Now the seething, surging tide
Rolls majestic! Burst asunder
Are its bonds. This heaven's wonder
Like the vast Euphrates roars,
Or the Ganges, by whose shores,
Where the slender palm-trees sway,
Plunge young elephants at play;
Or the Rhine that rushing, foaming
By Schaffhausen, lures the roaming
Berlin student he bewitches
To the wetting of his breeches;
Or the Vistula the scratching
Poles are never tired of watching,
While they sing beside its billows
Hero-songs beneath the willows.
It is almost like a sea,
Like the Red one, from which we
Came dry-footed with our plunder,
And which Pharaoh perished under
With his host, ere he had passed.
Ah, how deep and wide and vast!
Such a watery composition
Is, we're forced to make admission,
On the globe unmatched, sublime
And titanic for all time,
Great as God and Nature — more ,
I'm the owner of the score! "