"St. Goar" [essay]
St Goar is the least and sweetest place on all the Rhine. There is Godesberg
with its hilltop crested with ruins, there is Andernacht, with its venerable
remains of antiquity there is Ehrenbreitstein, on whose cliff never traitor stood
looking out far away over the
its
sea of rich champaign country, but there
is nothing like, St Goar. It has a lone hill beauty, the little scene round
it is exceeding small, but it has a modest secluded loveliness, a You look
on Andernacht with veneration, on Ehrenbreitstein with awe, but on St
Goar with love 1 There is a voice in all nature, b
List to the rave of the mad sea
Speaks it not eloquent‐
ly, does it not tell of its green weedy caverns and its coral towers
A and the high hills and shelly vallies far far beneath its cold
blue, and the skulls of the drowned men that grin from
among its rolled round pebbles. 2 List to the song of the
summer breeze and does it not tell of the blue heavens
and the white clouds and other climes and other seasons
and spicy gales and myrtle bowers and sweet things far away
How softly the Rhine sings at St Goar, and it tells of the cold
arched grottoes of the glacier and the crags of the far Alps, and
it how it joys to dash against grey rocks once more.