Classic Poem

While thus the maiden trilled and strummed,
The joys of heaven forestalling,
My box the Prussian douaniers
Were carefully overhauling.

They poked among handkerchiefs, shirts, and hose;
They rummaged in likely places;
They were nosing about for prohibited books,
And jewelry and laces.

Ye fools, who turn my boxes out,
There's nothing there forbidden;
The contraband I travel with,
In my head is safely hidden!

You will find neither Mechlin nor Brussels lace,
'Tis with what's in my head I trick you;
I warrant, were I to unpack my point,
It would prettily tease and prick you!

I carry the royal diamonds there
Of the Future, and need not falter:
The gems of the new, the unknown God,
That shall blaze upon his altar.

Oh, many a book I have stowed away;
I am speaking in moderation
When I tell you my brain is a warbling nest
Of books for confiscation.

Believe me, in Satan's library
Not one is worse or stranger;
Hoffmann von Fallersleben's own
Are not so fraught with danger.

A traveller standing by remarked
We had reached the chain of duties
Known as the Prussian Zollverein,
And enlarged upon its beauties.

“By the Zollverein,” he went on to say,
“Our national life is founded,
And our poor divided Fatherland
To one whole at last is rounded.

“The Zollverein gives a unity
Which is obvious and real;
The unity born of the censorship
Is the deeper, the ideal.

“The censorship unifies thought and soul.
What we want—and the goal is sighted—
Is a Germany welded to one great whole,
Without, within, united.”