The Poems of Schiller - Third period Part 35

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 n.o.bler aims their footsteps guiding on.

Yet coming ages ne'er will hear them sounding, They live but for the present hour alone; The pa.s.sing 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 PRINc.i.p.aL.

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 a.s.sured 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 l.u.s.t, 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 st.u.r.dy 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 appet.i.te 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 c.o.xcomb 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 a.s.semblies and city-visits, and may be relieve a Circa.s.sienne, 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.