Read "St. Laurence, Nuremberg" by Esther Singleton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
LINDA VILLARI
Once in the train bound for Nuremberg, every sight on the road seems / to bring one nearer to Medieval Germany, and is a fitting prelude to / its charms. The storied prettiness of the Rhine district left behind, / ripening vines give way to festoons of hops and plots of tobacco; you / pass through forests of fir and larch, and come to fields of gold / brocade where the lupines are in bloom. Woodlands merge into pleasant / meadows watered by swiftly-running streams; every village is crowned / by a ruined castle; and there are storks' nests on clustered roofs / about the red church spires. Flaxen-haired children are driving flocks / of fat geese; here and there is a battlemented monastery; then come / tracts of moorland flushed pink and purple with heather; you dive into / hill-sides; you sight dark masses of pine-trees beyond a winding river / crossed by an occasional ferry; you halt at medieval towns capped by / crumbling yellow walls of palace and prison, and before long at the / spick and span station of manufacturing Fürth (where most of the toys / and wood-carvings are now made). And then you see a confusion of dusky, / jagged roofs pierced by lofty spires and high walls; massive towers / loom above the greenery of a steep hill-side, and you know that your / goal is reached. This is Nuremberg, the "jewel-casket of the German / Empire."