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Special pages :
To The Bremen Courier
First published: in the Bremisches Unterhaltungsblatt No. 34, April 27, 1839
Published in English in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 2
In this poem Engels expressed his attitude to the weekly Der Bremer Stadbote, to which for fun he had sent several months in succession his poems (including To the Enemies, see this volume, p. 5) under the signature of Theodor Hildebrand, passing himself off as its supporter. This poem is also quoted, with minor stylistic changes, in Engels’ letter to Wilhelm Graeber written about April 28-30, 1839. (Note from MECW vol. 2, 1975)
Dear Bremen Courier,
Please don’t be offended
If you've become the laughing-stock of town.
Remember, friend, that folk have always tended
To ridicule what’s patently unsound.
Your sunshine days have very nearly ended
In the three months that you've been trotting round.
Have you been saying things you didn’t ought,
To give yourself such food for afterthoughts
My poems cost little effort when I did them;
The donkey work was almost wholly done.
I took your articles and parodied them;
The subject-matter came from you alone.
Simply subtract the rhyme-schemes and the rhythm —
The image that remains is all your own.
Rage, if you like, at your respectful and
Obedient servant,
Theodor Hildebrand