My dear Laura, Prosit Neujahr avant tout! Et puis apr s, as I cannot bear the idea you should translate Walther von der Vogelweide from a modernisation, I send you a copy of the original. You are quite right, the metre and rhyme of the original ought to be preserved in every translation of poetry, or else go the whole hog like the French and turn it at once into prose.
Letters: Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890