Classic Poem

Das ist ja die verkehrte Welt

This is a topsy-turvy world;
Men on their heads are walking!
The woodcocks, by the dozen, shoot
The hunters that are stalking.

The calves are roasting all the cooks;
And men are driven by horses;
On knowledge, light and liberty
The catholic owl discourses.

The herring is a sans-culotte ;
The truth Bettina's saying;
And Sophocles upon our stage
A Puss-in-boots is playing.

For German heroes apes have built
A Pantheon enormous!
Massmann at last has combed his hair,
The German prints inform us.

The German bears are atheists,
All former faiths rejecting;
While the French parrots have become
Good Christians, self-respecting.

The Moniteur of Uckermark
To madness seems to drive one:
A dead man there has dared to write
An epitaph on a live one.

Let us not swim against the stream;
'Twould be no use whatever.
So let us climb the hill and cry
" May the King live forever! "