Explore "Tales of a Wayside Inn" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
I trust that somewhere and somehow / You all have heard of Hagenau, / A quiet, quaint, and ancient town / Among the green Alsatian hills, / A place of valleys, streams, and mills, / Where Barbarossa's castle, brown / With rust of centuries, still looks down / On the broad, drowsy land below, -- / On shadowy forests filled with game, / And the blue river winding slow / Through meadows, where the hedges grow / That give this little town its name.
It happened in the good old times, / While yet the Master-singers filled / The noisy workshop and the guild / With various melodies and rhymes, / That here in Hagenau there dwelt / A cobbler, -- one who loved debate, / And, arguing from a postulate, / Would say what others only felt; / A man of forecast and of thrift, / And of a shrewd and careful mind / In this world's business, but inclined / Somewhat to let the next world drift.