476 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and' Letters. 
Land of my fathers! though no longer mine. 
If any soil is sacred it is thine! 
Thy image, always bright, is in my mind, 
And if no tie were wrought by living hand, 
My cherished dead would me to thee still bind— 
Thy holy graves—O thou, my Fatherland! 
O, if thy children all, who stayed at home, 
Did love thee like the ones thou badest roam, 
A Union soon, an empire would have birth, 
And thou wouldst see thy children hand in hand 
Make thee the mightiest land on earth, 
As thou’rt the best, my Fatherland! 
Tlie story is told that the German emperor chanced upon 
Erez’s poem in a German publication, and was so affected that 
he caused the restrictions applicable to the return of the Forty- 
Elighters to be greatly modified. Whether well-founded or not, 
the story might well be true. All of these Forty-Elighters 
poured out their aching hearts in verse', and naturally what they 
wrote rang true. Any of these outbursts stirs the pulses of him 
who reads: 
“Farewell to Germany,” by Puchner. 
“At Parting,” by Maerklin. 
“To Mjy Fatherland,” by Krez. 
Of the few writers who antedated the Forty-Eighters, mention 
may be limited to Oarl de Haas of Fond du Lac, and Alexander 
Oonze of Milwaukee. Oonze gave promise of a great poetic gift, 
but he found a soldier’s grave in Mexico when but 28 years of 
age. 9 Desire to- die on the battlefield, due to personal disap^ 
pointments, is said to' have prompted his enlistment in the 
Mexican War. 
The names that most readily occur of the recent school of 
German poets are those of Frank Siller, Otto William Sbubron 
and Julius Gugler. Mention must not be omitted, in even a 
brief review of Wisconsin German poets, of the excellent trans¬ 
lations which American poetry has been given at their hands— 
chiefly by Siller and Sbubron. Longfellow’s poems have been 
»His well-known “Oregon Lied” is reproduced in Milwaukee, by R. A. 
Koss, Milwaukee, 1871, p. 194. Several others of his poems are given, 
p. 224-228. 
