The patriots haunt
Dark tavern corners talking politics,
Get up their projects, bet and curse and yawn,
And booze it up for the welfare of the country.
Die Patrioten liegen
In dunkeln Schenken und politisieren,
Und subskribieren, wetten, fluchen, gähnen,
Und saufen auf das Wohl des Vaterlands.
"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).
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Thursday, November 20, 2025
Patriots
Heinrich Heine (1797-1856), William Ratcliff, lines 33-36 (tr. Hal Draper):