The godlike art which gives such boons to toil, Wallenstein:-the next stanza alludes to his belief THE beautiful, that men and gods alike subdues, must perish; For pity ne'er the iron breast of Stygian Jovet shall cherish ! Once only-Love, by aid of song, the shadow-sovereign thralled, And at the dreary threshold he again the boon recalled. Not Aphrodite's heavenly tears to love and life restored Her own adored Adonis, by the grisly monster gored! Not all the art of Thetis saved her god-like heroson, When, falling by the Scæan gate, his race of glory run! But forth she came, with all the nymphs of Nereus, from the deep, Around the silence of the dead to sorrow and to How soon the beautiful is past, the perfect dies away! Yet noble sounds the voice of wail--and woe the dead can grace; in astrology; of which such beautiful uses have been For never wail and woe are heard to mourn above made by Schiller in his solemn tragedy. The concluding point in the original requires some paraphrase in translation.-Schiller's lines are Und solch ein Bild darf ich dir freudig zeigen the base! Of glory in the grass, and splendor in the flower. But "The Ideal and the Actual" is purely philosophical; a poem, "in which," says Hoffmeister, "every object and epithet has a metaphysical background." Schiller himself was aware of its obscurity to the general reader; he desires that even the refining Humboldt “should read it in a kind of holy stillness-and banish, during the meditation it required, all that was profane." Humboldt proved himself worthy of these instructions by the enthusiastic admiration with which the poem inspired him. Previous to its composition, Schiller had been employed upon philosophical inquiries, especially his "Letters on the Esthetic Education of Man;" and of these letters it is truly observed, that the poem is the crowning flower. To those acquainted with Schiller's philosophical works and views, the poem is therefore less obscure; in its severe compression such readers behold but the poetical epitome of thoughts the depth of which they have already sounded, and the coherence of which they have already ascertained-they recognize a familiar symbol, where the general reader only perplexes himself in a riddle. Without entering into disquisitions, out of place in this translation, and fatiguing to those who desire in a collection of poems to enjoy the poetic-not to be bewildered by the abstractwe shall merely preface the poem, with the help of Schiller's commentators, by a short analysis of the general design and meaning, so at least as to facilitate the reader's study of this remarkable poem-study it will require and well repay. The poem begins, Stanza 1st, with the doctrine which Schiller has often inculcated, that to man there rests but the choice between the pleasures of sense, and the peace of the soul; but both are united in the life of the immortals, viz., the higher orders of being. Stanza 2d. Still it may be ours to attain, even on earth, to this loftier and holier life-provided we can raise ourselves beyond material objects. Stanza 3d. The fates can only influence the body, and the things of time and matter. But, safe from the changes of matter, and of life, the Platonic archetype, form, hovers in the realm of the ideal. If we can ascend to this realm, in other words, to the domain of beauty, we attain (Stanza 4th) to the perfection of humanity-a perfection only found in the immaterial forms and shadows of that realm-yet in which, as in the gods, the sensual and the intellectual powers are united. In the actual life we strive for a goal we cannot reach; in the ideal, the goal is attainable, and there effort is victory. With Stanza 5th begins the antithesis, which is a key to the remainder-an antithesis constantly balancing before us the conditions of the actual, and the privileges of the ideal. The ideal is not meant to relax, but to brace us for the actual life. From the latter we cannot escape; but when we begin to flag beneath the sense of our narrow limits, and the difficulties of the path, the eye, steadfastly fixed upon the ideal beauty aloft, beholds there the goal. Stanza 6th. In actual life, strength and courage are the requisites for success, and are doomed to eternal struggle; but (Stanza 7th) in the ideal life struggle exists not; the stream, gliding far from its rocky sources, is smoothed to repose. Stanza 8th. In the actual life, as long as the artist still has to contend with matter, he must strive and labor. Truth is only elicited by toil-the statue only wakens from the block by the stroke of the chisel; but when (Stanza 9th) he has once achieved the idea of beauty-when once he has elevated the material marble into form-all trace of his human neediness and frailty is lost, and his work seems the child of the soul. Stanza 9th. Again, in the actual world, the man who strives for virtue, finds every sentiment and every action poor compared to the rigid standard of the abstract moral law. But if (Stanza 9th), instead of striving for virtue, merely from the cold sense of duty, we live that life beyond the senses, in which virtue becomes, as it were, natural to us-in which its behests are served, not through duty, but inclination-then the gulf between man and the moral law is filled up; we take the godhead, so to speak, into our will; and heaven ceases its terrors; when man ceases to resist it. Stanza 10th. Finally, in actual life, sorrows, whether our own, or those with which we sympathize, are terrible and powerful; but (Stanza 11th) in the ideal world even sorrow has its pleasures. We contemplate the writhings of the Laocoon in marble, with delight in the greatness of art-not with anguish for the suffering, but with veneration for the grandeur with which the suffering is idealized by the artist, or expressed by the subject. Over the pain of art smiles the heaven of the moral world. Stanzas 11th and 12th. Man thus aspiring to the ideal, is compared to the mythical Hercules. In the actual world he must suffer and must toil; but when once he can cast aside the garb of clay, and through the ethereal flame separate the mortal from the immortal, the material dross sinks downward, the spirit soars aloft, and Hebe (or eternal youth) pours out nectar as to the gods. If the reader will have the patience to compare the above analysis with the subjoined version (in which the translator has also sought to render the general sense as intelligible as possible), he will probably find little difficulty in clearing up the author's meaning. Sinks downward, downward, downward as dream! Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul, And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream, Fills for a god the bowl! THE FAVOR OF THE MOMENT. ONCE more, then, we meet In the circles of yore; Let our song be as sweet In its wreaths as before. Who claims the first place In the tribute of song? The God to whose grace All our pleasures belong. Though Ceres may spread All her gifts on the shrine, Though the glass may be red With the blush of the vine, What boots--if the while Fall no spark on the hearth? If the heart do not smile With the instinct of mirth ?— From the clouds, from God's breast Must our happiness fall, 'Mid the blessed, most blest Is the MOMENT of all! Since creation began All that mortals have wrought; All that's godlike in MAN Comes the flash of a thought! For ages the stone In the quarry may lurk, An instant alone Can suffice to the work; An impulse give birth To the child of the soul And the fame of the whole.* And fleets from the sky, THE FORTUNE-FAVORED. a [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 The idea diffused by the translator through this and the preceding stanza, is more forcibly condensed by Schiller in four lines. "And ere a man hath power to say, 'behold,' implying that the beauty and the genius given, without | No less the glory of the Dorian Lord* labor, to some, but serve to the delight of those to whom That Vulcan wrought for him the shield and they are denied.] sword That round the mortal hovered all the hosts Of all Olympus-that his wrath to grace, AH! happy he, upon whose birth each God bright Idalia cradles, whose young lips the rod Of eloquent Hermes kindles-to whose eyes, Godlike the lot ordained for him to share, Self-shapes its objects and subdues the Fates- urn! From aught unworthy, the determined will Can guard the watchful spirit-there it ends ;The all that's glorious from the heaven descends; As some sweet mistress loves us, freely still Come the spontaneous gifts of heaven!-above Favor rules Jove, as it below rules Love! The immortals have their bias !-kindly they See the bright locks of youth enamored play, And where the glad one goes, shed gladness round the way. It is not they who boast the best to see, Hath oft but shone the brightest on the blind;– Scorn not the fortune-favored, that to him Untimely slaughtered, with resentful ghosts Scorn not the darlings of the beautiful, But with that soul he animates the rest; The busy mart let justice still control, worn. Like heaven's, each earthly Venus on the sight THE SOWER. SURE of the spring that warms them into birth, SENTENCES OF CONFUCIUS. TIME. THREEFOLD the stride of time, from first to last! Impatience, fret however she may, * Achilles. Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen In das schöne Wunderland.-SCHILLER, Sehnsucht. |