Legler—A W isconsin Group of German Poets. 475 
Konrad Krez was a young 1 exile who left his fatherland under 
sentence of death at the age of 20, hut whose heartstrings re¬ 
mained rooted in German soil to the day of his death—and he 
lived to nearly the allotted six score years and ten. His ex¬ 
quisite lyric “An mein Vaterland” has been reprinted in every 
German anthology that has appeared since the day the poem 
was first, published. There is not in the German language a 
poenu that conveys so poignantly the feeling of Ileimareh. The 
chaste and simple words stir one powerfully with the pathos of 
the exile’s cherished love for a fatherland which he can never 
see again. The verses have been set to music by two composers. 
One version, by Th. Randolph Reese, was published in Milwau¬ 
kee in 1898. The other composition, by Richard Ferber of Eau 
Olaire, was awarded first prize at one of the great sangerfests. 
At least two translations of the poem into Elnglish have appeared. 
I venture to give one by Wilhelm Otto Soubron. Excellent as 
this translation is, it fails to express fully the intense fervor and 
pathetic cadence conveyed by the original tongue. 
TO MY FATHERLAND. 
Mine was no tree within thy forests old, 
Mine not a sheaf of all thy grain fields gold, 
And without pity thou didst bid me go, 
The unprotected, to a foreign strand— 
Because for thee my soul, and not for self did glow— 
And yet I love thee, O my Fatherland! 
Beats there a heart, that of the youthful dream, 
Its first sweet love, does not retain a gleam? 
Ah! holier was the flame within my breast 
Than lovers e’er with ardor fanned; 
Ne’er bride, nor bridegroom e’er so blest, 
Held faith like mine, dear Fatherland! 
No “manna” heaven poured on thee, I know, 
Yet many were the gifts it did bestow: 
I saw the wonders of a Southern clime 
Since last I on thy soil did stand, 
Yet fairer seemed to me than palm and lime, 
The apple blossom of my Fatherland! 
