Chapter 12

Severe the proof the Grecian youth was doomed to undergo, Before he might what lurks beneath the Eleusinia know-- Art thou prepared and ripe, the shrine--the inner shrine--to win, Where Pallas guards from vulgar eyes the mystic prize within? Knowest thou what bars thy way? how dear the bargain thou dost make, When but to buy uncertain good, sure good thou dost forsake? Feel'st thou sufficient strength to brave the deadliest human fray, When heart from reason--sense from thought, shall rend themselves away? Sufficient valor, war with doubt, the hydra-shape, to wage; And that worst foe within thyself with manly soul engage? With eyes that keep their heavenly health--the innocence of youth To guard from every falsehood, fair beneath the mask of truth? Fly, if thou canst not trust thy heart to guide thee on the way-- Oh, fly the charmed margin ere th' abyss engulf its prey. Round many a step that seeks the light, the shades of midnight close; But in the glimmering twilight, see--how safely childhood goes!

EXPECTATION AND FULFILMENT.

Into life's ocean the youth with a thousand masts daringly launches; Mute, in a boat saved from wreck, enters the gray-beard the port.

THE COMMON FATE.

See how we hate, how we quarrel, how thought and how feeling divide us! But thy locks, friend, like mine, meanwhile are bleachening fast.

HUMAN ACTION.

Where the pathway begins, eternity seems to lie open, Yet at the narrowest point even the wisest man stops.

NUPTIAL ODE. [60]

Fair bride, attended by our blessing, Glad Hymen's flowery path 'gin pressing! We witnessed with enraptured eye The graces of thy soul unfolding, Thy youthful charms their beauty moulding To blossom for love's ecstasy. A happy fate now hovers round thee, And friendship yields without a smart To that sweet god whose might hath bound thee;-- He needs must have, he hath thy heart!

To duties dear, to trouble tender, Thy youthful breast must now surrender, Thy garland's summons must obey. Each toying infantine sensation, Each fleeting sport of youth's creation, Forevermore hath passed away; And Hymen's sacred bond now chaineth Where soft and fluttering love was shrined; Yet for a heart, where beauty reigneth, Of flowers alone that bond is twined.

The secret that can keep forever In verdant links, that naught can sever, The bridal garland, wouldst thou find? 'Tis purity the heart pervading, The blossoms of a grace unfading, And yet with modest shame combined, Which, like the sun's reflection glowing, Makes every heart throb blissfully;-- 'Tis looks with mildness overflowing, And self-maintaining dignity!

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEW CENTURY.

Where will a place of refuge, noble friend, For peace and freedom ever open lie! The century in tempests had its end, The new one now begins with murder's cry.

Each land-connecting bond is torn away, Each ancient custom hastens to decline; Not e'en the ocean can war's tumult stay. Not e'en the Nile-god, not the hoary Rhine.

Two mighty nations strive, with hostile power, For undivided mastery of the world; And, by them, each land's freedom to devour, The trident brandished is--the lightning hurled.

Each country must to them its gold afford, And, Brennus-like, upon the fatal day, The Frank now throws his heavy iron sword, The even scales of justice to o'erweigh.

His merchant-fleets the Briton greedily Extends, like polyp-limbs, on every side; And the domain of Amphitrite free As if his home it were, would fain bestride.

E'en to the south pole's dim, remotest star, His restless course moves onward, unrestrained; Each isle he tracks,--each coast, however far, But paradise alone he ne'er has gained!

Although thine eye may every map explore, Vainly thou'lt seek to find that blissful place, Where freedom's garden smiles for evermore, And where in youth still blooms the human race.

Before thy gaze the world extended lies, The very shipping it can scarce embrace; And yet upon her back, of boundless size, E'en for ten happy men there is not space!

Into thy bosom's holy, silent cells, Thou needs must fly from life's tumultuous throng! Freedom but in the realm of vision dwells, And beauty bears no blossoms but in song.

GRECIAN GENIUS.

TO MEYER IN ITALY.

Speechless to thousands of others, who with deaf hearts would consult him, Talketh the spirit to thee, who art his kinsman and friend.

THE FATHER.

Work as much as thou wilt, alone thou'lt be standing forever, Till by nature thou'rt joined forcibly on to the whole.

THE CONNECTING MEDIUM.

How does nature proceed to unite the high and the lowly In mankind? She commands vanity 'tween them to stand!

THE MOMENT.

Doubtless an epoch important has with the century risen; But the moment so great finds but a race of small worth.

GERMAN COMEDY.

Fools we may have in plenty, and simpletons, too, by the dozen; But for comedy these never make use of themselves.

FAREWELL TO THE READER.

A maiden blush o'er every feature straying, The Muse her gentle harp now lays down here, And stands before thee, for thy judgment praying,-- She waits with reverence, but not with fear; Her last farewell for his kind smile delaying. Whom splendor dazzles not who holds truth dear. The hand of him alone whose soaring spirit Worships the beautiful, can crown her merit.

These simple lays are only heard resounding, While feeling hearts are gladdened by their tone, With brighter phantasies their path surrounding, To nobler aims their footsteps guiding on. Yet coming ages ne'er will hear them sounding, They live but for the present hour alone; The passing moment called them into being, And, as the hours dance on, they, too, are fleeing.

The spring returns, and nature then awaking, Bursts into life across the smiling plain; Each shrub its perfume through the air is shaking, And heaven is filled with one sweet choral strain; While young and old, their secret haunts forsaking, With raptured eye and ear rejoice again. The spring then flies,--to seed return the flowers. And naught remains to mark the vanished hours.

DEDICATION TO DEATH, MY PRINCIPAL.

Most high and mighty Czar of all flesh, ceaseless reducer of empires, unfathomable glutton in the whole realms of nature.

With the most profound flesh-creeping I take the liberty of kissing the rattling leg-bones of your voracious Majesty, and humbly laying this little book at your dried-up feet. My predecessors have always been accustomed, as if on purpose to annoy you, to transport their goods and chattels to the archives of eternity, directly under your nose, forgetting that, by so doing, they only made your mouth water the more, for the proverb--Stolen bread tastes sweetest--is applicable even to you. No! I prefer to dedicate this work to you, feeling assured that you will throw it aside.

But, joking apart! methinks we two know each other better than by mere hearsay. Enrolled in the order of Aesculapius, the first-born of Pandora's box, as old as the fall of man, I have stood at your altar,-- have sworn undying hatred to your hereditary foe, Nature, as the son of Hamilcar to the seven hills of Rome,--have sworn to besiege her with a whole army of medicines,--to throw up barricades round the obstinate soul,--to drive from the field the insolents who cut down your fees and cripple your finances,--and on the Archaean battle-plain to plant your midnight standard. In return (for one good turn deserves another), you must prepare for me the precious TALISMAN, which can save me from the gallows and the wheel uninjured, and with a whole skin--

Jusque datum sceleri.

Come then! act the generous Maecenas; for observe, I should be sorry to fare like my foolhardy colleagues and cousins, who, armed with stiletto and pocket-pistol, hold their court in gloomy ravines, or mix in the subterranean laboratory the wondrous polychrest, which, when taken with proper zeal, tickles our political noses, either too little or too much, with throne vacancies or state-fevers. D'Amiens and Ravaillac!--Ho, ho, ho!--'Tis a good thing for straight limbs!

Perhaps you have been whetting your teeth at Easter and Michaelmas?--the great book-epidemic times at Leipzig and Frankfort! Hurrah for the waste-paper!--'twill make a royal feast. Your nimble brokers, Gluttony and Lust, bring you whole cargoes from the fair of life. Even Ambition, your grandpapa--War, Famine, Fire, and Plague, your mighty huntsmen, have provided you with many a jovial man-chase. Avarice and Covetousness, your sturdy butlers, drink to your health whole towns floating in the bubbling cup of the world-ocean. I know a kitchen in Europe where the rarest dishes have been served up in your honor with festive pomp. And yet--who has ever known you to be satisfied, or to complain of indigestion? Your digestive faculties are of iron; your entrails fathomless!

Pooh--I had many other things to say to you, but I am in a hurry to be off. You are an ugly brother-in-law--go! I hear you are calculating on living to see a general collation, where great and small, globes and lexicons, philosophies and knick-knacks, will fly into your jaws--a good appetite to you, should it come to that.--Yet, ravenous wolf that you are! take care that you don't overeat yourself, and have to disgorge to a hair all that you have swallowed, as a certain Athenian (no particular friend of yours, by-the-by) has prophesied.

PREFACE.

TOBOLSKO, 2d February.

Tum primum radiis gelidi incaluere Triones.

Flowers in Siberia? Behind this lies a piece of knavery, or the sun must make face against midnight. And yet--if ye were to exert yourselves! 'Tis really so; we have been hunting sables long enough; let us for once in a way try our luck with flowers. Have not enough Europeans come to us stepsons of the sun, and waded through our hundred years' snow, to pluck a modest flower? Shame upon our ancestors--we'll gather them ourselves, and frank a whole basketful to Europe. Do not crush them, ye children of a milder heaven!

But to be serious; to remove the iron weight of prejudice that broods heavily over the north, requires a stronger lever than the enthusiasm of a few individuals, and a firmer Hypomochlion than the shoulders of two or three patriots. Yet if this anthology reconciles you squeamish Europeans to us snow-men as little as--let's suppose the case--our "Muses' Almanac," [61] which we--let's again suppose the case--might have written, it will at least have the merit of helping its companions through the whole of Germany to give the last neck-stab to expiring taste, as we people of Tobolsko like to word it.

If your Homers talk in their sleep, and your Herculeses kill flies with their clubs--if every one who knows how to give vent to his portion of sorrow in dreary Alexandrines, interprets that as a call to Helicon, shall we northerns be blamed for tinkling the Muses' lyre?--Your matadors claim to have coined silver when they have stamped their effigy on wretched pewter; and at Tobolsko coiners are hanged. 'Tis true that you may often find paper-money amongst us instead of Russian roubles, but war and hard times are an excuse for anything.

Go forth then, Siberian anthology! Go! Thou wilt make many a coxcomb happy, wilt be placed by him on the toilet-table of his sweetheart, and in reward wilt obtain her alabaster, lily-white hand for his tender kiss. Go! thou wilt fill up many a weary gulf of ennui in assemblies and city-visits, and may be relieve a Circassienne, who has confessed herself weary amidst a shower of calumnies. Go! thou wilt be consulted in the kitchens of many critics; they will fly thy light, and like the screech-owl, retreat into thy shadow. Ho, ho, ho! Already I hear the ear-cracking howls in the inhospitable forest, and anxiously conceal myself in my sable.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] In Schiller the eight long lines that conclude each stanza of this charming love-poem, instead of rhyming alternately as in the translation, chime somewhat to the tune of Byron's Don Juan--six lines rhyming with each other, and the two last forming a separate couplet. In other respects the translation, it is hoped, is sufficiently close and literal.

[15] The peach.

[16] Sung in "The Parasite," a comedy which Schiller translated from Picard--much the best comedy, by the way, that Picard ever wrote.

[17] The idea diffused by the translator through this and the preceding stanza is more forcibly condensed by Schiller in four lines.

[18] "And ere a man hath power to say, 'behold,' The jaws of Darkness do devour it up, So quick bright things come to confusion."-- SHAKESPEARE.

[19] The three following ballads, in which Switzerland is the scene, betray their origin in Schiller's studies for the drama of William Tell.

[20] The avalanche--the equivoque of the original, turning on the Swiss word Lawine, it is impossible to render intelligible to the English reader. The giants in the preceding line are the rocks that overhang the pass which winds now to the right, now to the left, of a roaring stream.

[21] The Devil's Bridge. The Land of Delight (called in Tell "a serene valley of joy") to which the dreary portal (in Tell the black rock gate) leads, is the Urse Vale. The four rivers, in the next stanza, are the Reus, the Rhine, the Tessin, and the Rhone.

[22] The everlasting glacier. See William Tell, act v, scene 2.

[23] This has been paraphrased by Coleridge.

[24] Ajax the Less.

[25] Ulysses.

[26] Achilles.

[27] Diomed.

[28] Cassandra.

[29] It may be scarcely necessary to treat, however briefly, of the mythological legend on which this exquisite elegy is founded; yet we venture to do so rather than that the forgetfulness of the reader should militate against his enjoyment of the poem. Proserpine, according to the Homeride (for the story is not without variations), when gathering flowers with the Ocean-Nymphs, is carried off by Aidoneus, or Pluto. Her mother, Ceres, wanders over the earth for her in vain, and refuses to return to heaven till her daughter is restored to her. Finally, Jupiter commissions Hermes to persuade Pluto to render up his bride, who rejoins Ceres at Eleusis. Unfortunately she has swallowed a pomegranate seed in the Shades below, and is thus mysteriously doomed to spend one-third of the year with her husband in Hades, though for the remainder of the year she is permitted to dwell with Ceres and the gods. This is one of the very few mythological fables of Greece which can be safely interpreted into an allegory. Proserpine denotes the seed-corn one-third of the year below the earth; two-thirds (that is, dating from the appearance of the ear) above it. Schiller has treated this story with admirable and artistic beauty; and, by an alteration in its symbolical character has preserved the pathos of the external narrative, and heightened the beauty of the interior meaning--associating the productive principle of the earth with the immortality of the soul. Proserpine here is not the symbol of the buried seed, but the buried seed is the symbol of her--that is, of the dead. The exquisite feeling of this poem consoled Schiller's friend, Sophia La Roche, in her grief for her son's death. [30] What a beautiful vindication of the shortness of human life!

[31] The corn-flower.

[32] For this story, see Herodotus, book iii, sections 40-43.

[33] President of Council of Five Hundred.

[34] We have already seen in "The Ring of Polycrates," Schiller's mode of dealing with classical subjects. In the poems that follow, derived from similar sources, the same spirit is maintained. In spite of Humboldt, we venture to think that Schiller certainly does not narrate Greek legends in the spirit of an ancient Greek. The Gothic sentiment, in its ethical depth and mournful tenderness, more or less pervades all that he translates from classic fable into modern pathos. The grief of Hero in the ballad subjoined, touches closely on the lamentations of Thekla, in "Wallenstein." The Complaint of Ceres, embodies Christian grief and Christian hope. The Trojan Cassandra expresses the moral of the Northern Faust. Even the "Victory Feast" changes the whole spirit of Homer, on whom it is founded, by the introduction of the ethical sentiment at the close, borrowed, as a modern would apply what he so borrows from the moralizing Horace. Nothing can be more foreign to the Hellenic genius, (if we except the very disputable intention of the "Prometheus"), than the interior and typical design which usually exalts every conception in Schiller. But it is perfectly open to the modern poet to treat of ancient legends in the modern spirit. Though he selects a Greek story, he is still a modern who narrates--he can never make himself a Greek any more than Aeschylus in the "Persae" could make himself a Persian. But this is still more the privilege of the poet in narrative, or lyrical composition, than in the drama, for in the former he does not abandon his identity, as in the latter he must--yet even this must has its limits. Shakspeare's wonderful power of self-transfusion has no doubt enabled him, in his plays from Roman history, to animate his characters with much of Roman life. But no one can maintain that a Roman would ever have written plays in the least resembling "Julius Caesar," or "Coriolanus," or "Antony and Cleopatra." The portraits may be Roman, but they are painted in the manner of the Gothic school. The spirit of antiquity is only in them, inasmuch as the representation of human nature, under certain circumstances, is accurately, though loosely outlined. When the poet raises the dead, it is not to restore, but to remodel.

[35] This notes the time of year--not the time of day--viz., about the 23d of September.--HOFFMEISTER.

[36] Hecate as the mysterious goddess of Nature.--HOFFMEISTER.

[37] This story, the heroes of which are more properly known to us under the names of Damon and Pythias (or Phintias), Schiller took from Hyginus in whom the friends are called Moerus and Selinuntius. Schiller has somewhat amplified the incidents in the original, in which the delay of Moerus is occasioned only by the swollen stream--the other hindrances are of Schiller's invention. The subject, like "The Ring of Polycrates," does not admit of that rich poetry of description with which our author usually adorns some single passage in his narratives. The poetic spirit is rather shown in the terse brevity with which picture after picture is not only sketched but finished--and in the great thought at the close. Still it is not one of Schiller's best ballads. His additions to the original story are not happy. The incident of the robbers is commonplace and poor. The delay occasioned by the thirst of Moerus is clearly open to Goethe's objection (an objection showing very nice perception of nature)--that extreme thirst was not likely to happen to a man who had lately passed through a stream on a rainy day, and whose clothes must have been saturated with moisture--nor in the traveller's preoccupied state of mind, is it probable that he would have so much felt the mere physical want. With less reason has it been urged by other critics, that the sudden relenting of the tyrant is contrary to his character. The tyrant here has no individual character at all. He is the mere personation of disbelief in truth and love--which the spectacle of sublime self-abnegation at once converts. In this idea lies the deep philosophical truth, which redeems all the defects of the piece--for poetry, in its highest form, is merely this--"Truth made beautiful."

[38] The somewhat irregular metre of the original has been preserved in this ballad, as in other poems; although the perfect anapaestic metre is perhaps more familiar to the English ear.

[39] "Die Gestalt"--Form, the Platonic Archetype.

[40] More literally translated thus by the author of the article on Schiller in the Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843--

"Thence all witnesses forever banished Of poor human nakedness."

[41] The law, i. e., the Kantian ideal of truth and virtue. This stanza and the next embody, perhaps with some exaggeration, the Kantian doctrine of morality.

[42] "But in God's sight submission is command." "Jonah," by the Rev. F. Hodgson. Quoted in Foreign and Colonial Review, July, 1843: Art. Schiller, p. 21.

[43] It seems generally agreed that poetry is allegorized in these stanzas; though, with this interpretation, it is difficult to reconcile the sense of some of the lines--for instance, the last in the first stanza. How can poetry be said to leave no trace when she takes farewell?

[44] "I call the living--I mourn the dead--I break the lightning." These words are inscribed on the great bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen--also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air caused by the sound of a bell, broke the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud.

[45] A piece of clay pipe, which becomes vitrified if the metal is sufficiently heated.

[46] The translator adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others.

[47] Written in the time of the French war.

[48] Literally, "the manners." The French word moeurs corresponds best with the German.

[49] The epithet in the first edition is ruhmlose.

[50] For this interesting story, see Cox's "House of Austria," vol i, pp. 87-98 (Bohn's Standard Library).

[51] See "Piccolomini," act ii., scene 6; and "The Death of Wallenstein," act v., scene 3.

[52] This poem is very characteristic of the noble ease with which Schiller often loves to surprise the reader, by the sudden introduction of matter for the loftiest reflection in the midst of the most familiar subjects. What can be more accurate and happy than the poet's description of the national dance, as if such description were his only object--the outpouring, as it were, of a young gallant intoxicated by the music, and dizzy with the waltz? Suddenly and imperceptibly the reader finds himself elevated from a trivial scene. He is borne upward to the harmony of the sphere. He bows before the great law of the universe--the young gallant is transformed into the mighty teacher; and this without one hard conceit --without one touch of pedantry. It is but a flash of light; and where glowed the playful picture shines the solemn moral.

[53] The first five verses in the original of this poem are placed as a motto on Goethe's statue in the Library at Weimar. The poet does not here mean to extol what is vulgarly meant by the gifts of fortune; he but develops a favorite idea of his, that, whatever is really sublime and beautiful, comes freely down from heaven; and vindicates the seeming partiality of the gods, by implying that the beauty and the genius given, without labor, to some, but serve to the delight of those to whom they are denied.

[54] Achilles.

[55] "Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen In das schoene Wunderland."--SCHILLER, Sehnsucht.