When the copper within Seethes and simmers-the tin, Pour quick, that the fluid that feeds the bell May flow in the right course glib and well. Deep hid within this nether cell, What force with fire is moulding thus, In yonder airy tower shall dwell, And witness wide and far of us! It shall, in later days, unfailing, Rouse many an ear to wrapped emotion; That metal tongue shall backward ring, III. See the silvery bubbles spring! Purge the flood, and speed the flow. Pure, the fusion must come; For perfect and pure we the metal must keep, That its voice may be perfect, and pure, and deep. That voice, with merry music rife, The cherished child shall welcome in; What time the rosy dreams of life, In the first slumber's arms begin. As yet in time's dark womb unwarning, Repose the days, or foul or fair; And watchful o'er that golden morning, The mother-love's untiring care! And swift the years like arrows flyNo more with girls content to play, Bounds the proud boy upon his way, Storms through loud life's tumultuous pleasures, With pilgrim staff the wide world measures; And, wearied with the wish to roam, Again seeks, stranger-like, the father-home. And, lo, as some sweet vision breaks Out from its native morning skies, With rosy shame on downcast cheeks, From all his wild companions flown; Blushing, he glides where'er she move; The happy wild flowers court him. The growth of life's first age of gold; IV. Browning o'er, the pipes are simmering, A piece of clay pipe, which becomes vitrified if the metal is sufficiently heated. So be it with thee, if forever united, The heart to the heart flows in one, love-delighted; Illusion is brief, but repentance is long. With her virgin wreath, the bride! Must the May of life depart: When passion is mute, With struggle and strife, And hunt down his fortune! Then flows in a current the gear and the gain, And the garners are filled with the gold of the What vapor, what vapor-God help us!-has risen ? Ha! the flame like a torrent leaps forth from its prison ! What friend is like the might of fire While no force can withstand, And the work of his hand! Or the curse or the blessing may fall! Come the dews, the revivers of all! Come the levin, the bolt, and the ball! Look-look-red as blood It is not the daylight that fills with its flood What a clamor awaking Roars up through the street, What a hell-vapor breaking 1 Rolls on through the street, And higher and higher To the dark womb of sacred earth This labor of our hands is given, As seeds that wait the second birth, And turn to blessings watched by heaven! Ah seeds, how dearer far than they We bury in the dismal tomb, Where hope and sorrow bend to pray, That suns beyond the realm of day May warm them into bloom! From the steeple Tolls the bell, Deep and heavy, The death-knell ! Guiding with dirge-note-solemn, sad, and slow, To the last home earth's weary wanderers know. It is that worshipped wifeIt is that faithful mother !* Whom the dark prince of shadows leads be nighted, From that dear arm where oft she hung delighted. Far from those blithe companions, born Who was the mother of that home! The care-the watch-the face-the MOTHERAnd where she sat the babes beside, Sits with unloving looks-ANOTHER! VII. While the mass is cooling now, Loose the travail to the pleasure. And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace, If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release! Homeward from the tasks of day, Now, the slow sheep homeward bleating- Though darkness is spreading Called the wild man from waste and wold. The translator adheres to the original, in forsaking the rhyme in these lines and some others. To break the mould, the master may, The metal seeks itself to pour. Behold the red destruction come! The latent spark to flame is blown ; To claim, without a guide, their own! The hyæna-shapes, (that women were!) They hound-they rend--they mangle there- Nought rests to hallow-burst the ties And universal crime is law! Man fears the tiger's fangs of terror; No torch, though lit from heaven, illumes The city and the land! IX. Rejoice and laud the prospering skies! And even the scutcheon, clear-graven, shall tell Come in-come in My merry men-we'll form a ring The new-born labor christening And "CONCORD" we will name her! To union may her heart-felt call In brother-love attune us all! May she the destined glory win poems, the hand of Schiller has entwined. In England, "The Lay of the Bell" has been the best known of the poet's compositions-out of the drama. It has been the favorite subject selected by his translators; to say nothing of others (more recent, but with which, we own we are unacquainted), the elegant version of Lord Francis Egerton has long since familiarized its beauties to the English public; and had it been possible to omit from our collection a poem of such importance, we would willingly have declined the task which suggests comparisons disadvantageous to ourselves. The idea of this poem had long been revolved by Schiller.* He went often to a bellfoundry, to make himself master of the mechanical process, which he has applied to purposes so ideal. Even from the time in which he began the actual composition of the poem, two years elapsed before it was completed. The work profited by the delay, and as the poet is generally clear in proportion to his entire familiarity with his own design, so of all Schiller's moral poems this is the most intelligible to the ordinary understanding; perhaps the more so, because, as one of his commentators has remarked, the principal ideas and images he has already expressed in his previous writings, and his mind was thus free to give itself up more to the form than the thought., Still we think that the symmetry and oneness of the composition have been indiscriminately For which the master sought to frame her- panegyrized. As the Lay of Life, it begins with Aloft-(all earth's existence under,) In blue-pavilion'd heaven afar To dwell-the Neighbor of the Thunder, Be hers above a voice to raise Like those bright hosts in yonder sphere, She lends the warning voice to Fate; But now so mighty, melts away- Slowly now the cords upheave her! She has risen-she sways, Birth and when it arrives at Death, it has reached, its legitimate conclusion. The reader will observe, at the seventh strophe, that there is an abrupt and final break in the individual interest which has hitherto connected the several portions. Till then, he has had before him the prominent figure of a single man-the one representative of human life-whose baptism the bell has celebrated, whose youth, wanderings, return to his father's house, love, marriage, prosperity, misfortunes, to the death of the wife, have carried on the progress of the poem; and this leading figure then recedes altogether from the scene, and the remainder of the poem, till the ninth stanza, losing sight altogether of individual life, merely repeats the purpose of "The Walk," and confounds itself in illustrations of social life in general. The picture of the French Revolution, though admirably done, is really not only an episode in the main design, but is merely a copy of that already painted, and set in its proper place, in the historical poem of "The Walk." But whatever weight may be attached, whether to this objection or to others which we have seen elsewhere urged, the "non Ego paucis offendar maculis" may, indeed, be well applied to a poem so replete with the highest excellences, so original in conception, so full of pathos, spirit, and variety to-in its plan, and so complete in its mastery over form and language. . . . Much of its beauty must Is The Walk" we have seen the progress of society-in The Bell" we have the lay of the life of man. This is the crowning flower of that garland of humanity, which, in his culture-historic * Written in the time of the French war. escape in translation, even if an English Schiller were himself the translator. For that beauty which belongs to form--the "curiosa felicitas verborum" is always untranslatable. Witness the odes of Horace, the greater part of Goethe's ly See Life of Schiller, by Madame von Wolzogen. rics, and the choruses of Sophocles. Though the life of man is portrayed, it is the life of a German man. The wanderings, or apprenticeship, of the youth, are not a familiar feature in our own civilization; the bustling housewife is peculiarly German; so is the incident of the fire-a misfortune very common in parts of Germany, and which the sound of the church-bell proclaims. Thus that peculiar charm which belongs to the recognition of familiar and household images, in an ideal and poetic form, must be in a great measure lost to a foreigner. The thought, too, at the end--the prayer for peace--is of a local and temporary nature. It breathed the wish of all Germany, during the four years' war with France, and was, at the date of publication, like all temporary allusions, a strong and effective close, to become, after the interest of the allusion ceased, comparatively feeble and non-universal. These latter observations are made, not in depreciation of the poem, but on behalf of it; to show that it has beauties peculiar to the language it was written in, and the people it addressed, of which it must be despoiled in translation. THE POETRY OF LIFE. "WHO would himself with shadows entertain, Or gild his life with lights that shine in vain, Or nurse false hopes that do but cheat the true? Though with my dream my heaven should be resigned Though the free-pinioned soul that once could dwell In the large empire of the possible, This work-day life with iron chains may bind, So speak'st thou, friend, how stronger far than I; sky, The summer glory withers from the scene, Fall from the sister-graces' waving hair. The world seems what it is-A grave! and love THE ANTIQUE AT PARIS. WHAT the Greek wrought, the vaunting Frank may gain, And waft the pomp of Hellas to the Seine; THE MAID OF ORLEANS. To flaunt the fair shape of humanity, Lewd mockery dragged thee through the mire it trod.* Wit wars with beauty everlastingly— Yearns for no angel--worships to no GodViews the heart's wealth, to steal it as the thiefAssails delusion, but to kill belief. Yet the true poetry-herself, like thee, Gives thee her birthright of divinity, Thy wrongs in life in her star-worlds repaid. Sweet virgin-type of thought, pure, brave, and high The heart created thee-thou canst not die. The mean world loves to darken what is bright, To see to dust each loftier image brought; But fear not-souls there are that can delight In the high memory and the stately thought; To ribald mirth let Momus rouse the mart, But forms more noble glad the noble heart. THEKLA. (A SPIRIT VOICE.) [It was objected to Schiller's "Wallenstein," that he had suffered Thekla to disappear from the play without any clear intimation of her fate. These stanzas are his answer to the objection.] WHERE am I? whither borne? From thee Wouldst ask, where wing their flight away And have I found the lost again? Yes, I with him at last am wed; Where hearts are never rent in twain, And tears are never shed. Voltaire, in "The Pucelle." |