Granite.

In unterirdischer Kammer                 Sprach grollend der alte Granit:                 'Da droben den wss'rigen Jammer                 Den mach' ich jetzt lnger nicht mit.'     In his lair subterranean, grumbling         Old Granite said: 'One thing is sure,     That slopping and slippery tumbling         Up yonder, no more I'll endure.     So wearily wallows the water         His billows of brine o'er the land,     'Stead of prouder and fairer and better         All is turning to slime and to sand.     'That would be a nice limestony cover,         A sweet geological swash,     If the coat of the wide world all over         Were one sedimentary wash.     By and by 'twill be myth and no true thing         What were hills - what was high or was low.     The deuce take their drifting and smoothing;         Hurrah! far eruption I go!'     So he spoke, and to aid him, pro rata,         The brave-hearted Porphyry flew,     The weak-hearted crystalline strata         He scornfully shattered in two.     With flashing and crashing and bellow,         As though the world's end were to dread,     Even Graywack, that decent old fellow,         In terror stood up on his head.     Also Stonecoal and Limestone and Trias         Fast vanished, internally mined.     Loud wailed in the Jura, the Lias,         That the wild fire had scorched him behind.     And Limestone, the marl-plot of chalkers,         Said later, in deep earnest chimes,     'Was there no one, to stop, 'mong you talkers,         This wild revolution betimes?'     But upwards through strata and fountains         Passed the conquering hero with heat,     Until from the sunniest mountains         He gazed on the world at his feet.     Then he shouted with yodling and singing,     'Hurrah! 'Twas courageously done,     Even we can be doing and bringing         What it only needs pluck to be won.' Translated From The German Of Joseph Victor Scheffel By Charles G. Leland.