Friedrich Schiller

An aged satyr sought
Around my Muse to pass,
Attempting to pay court,
And eyed her fondly through his glass.

By Phoebus' golden torch,
By Luna's pallid light,
Around her temple's porch
Crept the unhappy sharp-eared wight;

And warbled many a lay,
Her beauty's praise to sing,
And fiercely scraped away
On his discordant fiddle-string.

With tears, too, swelled his eyes,
As large as nuts, or larger;
He gasped forth heavy sighs,
Like music from Silenus' charger.

The Muse sat still, and played
Within her grotto fair,
And peevishly surveyed
Signor Adonis Goatsfoot there.

"Who ever would kiss thee,
Thou ugly, dirty dunce?
Wouldst thou a gallant be,
As Midas was Apollo once?

"Speak out, old horn...

She sought to breathe one word, but vainly;
Too many listeners were nigh;
And yet my timid glance read plainly
The language of her speaking eye.
Thy silent glades my footstep presses,
Thou fair and leaf-embosomed grove!
Conceal within thy green recesses
From mortal eye our sacred love!

Afar with strange discordant noises,
The busy day is echoing;
And 'mid the hollow hum of voices,
I hear the heavy hammer ring.
'Tis thus that man, with toil ne'er ending
Extorts from heaven his daily bread;
Yet oft unseen the Gods are sending
The gifts of fortune on his head!

Oh, let mankind discover never
How true love fills with bliss our hearts
They would but crush our joy forever,
For joy to them no glow imparts.
Thou ne'er wilt from the world...

See in the babe two loveliest flowers united yet in truth,
While in the bud they seem the same the virgin and the youth!
But loosened is the gentle bond, no longer side by side
From holy shame the fiery strength will soon itself divide.
Permit the youth to sport, and still the wild desire to chase,
For, but when sated, weary strength returns to seek the grace.
Yet in the bud, the double flowers the future strife begin,
How precious all yet naught can still the longing heart within.
In ripening charms the virgin bloom to woman shape hath grown,
But round the ripening charms the pride hath clasped its guardian zone;
Shy, as before the hunter's horn the doe all trembling moves,
She flies from man as from a foe, and hates before she loves!

From lowering brows this struggling wo...

MATTHEW.
Gossip, you'll like to hear, no doubt!
A learned work has just come out
Messias is the name 'twill bear;
The man has travelled through the air,
And on the sun-beplastered roads
Has lost shoe-leather by whole loads,
Has seen the heavens lie open wide,
And hell has traversed with whole hide.
The thought has just occurred to me
That one so skilled as he must be
May tell us how our flax and wheat arise.
What say you? Shall I try to ascertain?

LUKE.
You fool, to think that any one so wise
About mere flax and corn would rack his brain.

Sure of the spring that warms them into birth,
The golden seeds thou trustest to the earth;
And dost thou doubt the eternal spring sublime,
For deeds the seeds which wisdom sows in time.

'Tis thy Muse's delight to sing God's pity to mortals;
But, that they pitiful are, is it a matter for song?

Years has the master been laboring, but always without satisfaction;
To an ingenious race 'twould be in vision conferred.
What they yesterday learned, to-day they fain would be teaching:
Small compassion, alas, is by those gentlemen shown!

Life she received from fable; the schools deprived her of being,
Life creative again she has from reason received.

By love are blest the gods on high,
Frail man becomes a deity
When love to him is given;
'Tis love that makes the heavens shine
With hues more radiant, more divine,
And turns dull earth to heaven!

In Pyrrha's rear (so poets sang
In ages past and gone),
The world from rocky fragments sprang
Mankind from lifeless stone.

Their soul was but a thing of night,
Like stone and rock their heart;
The flaming torch of heaven so bright
Its glow could ne'er impart.

Young loves, all gently hovering round,
Their souls as yet had never bound
In soft and rosy chains;
No feeling muse had sought to raise
Their bosoms with ennobling lays,
Or sweet, harmonious strains.

Around each other lovingly
No garlands then entwined;
The s...

Two genii are there, from thy birth through weary life to guide thee;
Ah, happy when, united both, they stand to aid beside thee?
With gleesome play to cheer the path, the one comes blithe with beauty,
And lighter, leaning on her arm, the destiny and duty.
With jest and sweet discourse she goes unto the rock sublime,
Where halts above the eternal sea [57] the shuddering child of time.
The other here, resolved and mute and solemn, claspeth thee,
And bears thee in her giant arms across the fearful sea.
Never admit the one alone! Give not the gentle guide
Thy honor nor unto the stern thy happiness confide!

Two are the pathways by which mankind can to virtue mount upward;
If thou should find the one barred, open the other will lie.
'Tis by exertion the happy obtain her, the suffering by patience.
Blest is the man whose kind fate guides him along upon both!

A youth, impelled by a burning thirst for knowledge
To roam to Sais, in fair Egypt's land,
The priesthood's secret learning to explore,
Had passed through many a grade with eager haste,
And still was hurrying on with fond impatience.
Scarce could the Hierophant impose a rein
Upon his headlong efforts. "What avails
A part without the whole?" the youth exclaimed;
"Can there be here a lesser or a greater?
The truth thou speak'st of, like mere earthly dross,
Is't but a sum that can be held by man
In larger or in smaller quantity?
Surely 'tis changeless, indivisible;
Deprive a harmony of but one note,
Deprive the rainbow of one single color,
And all that will remain is naught, so long
As that one color, that one note, is wanting."

While thus they convers...

Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges,
Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife;
But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shining
Lovingly forth to the heart; so let it shine to the eye!

Hail to thee, mountain beloved, with thy glittering purple-dyed summit!
Hail to thee also, fair sun, looking so lovingly on!
Thee, too, I hail, thou smiling plain, and ye murmuring lindens,
Ay, and the chorus so glad, cradled on yonder high boughs;
Thee, too, peaceably azure, in infinite measure extending
Round the dusky-hued mount, over the forest so green,
Round about me, who now from my chamber's confinement escaping,
And from vain frivolous talk, gladly seek refuge with thee.
Through me to quicken me runs the balsamic stream of thy breezes,
While the energetical light freshens the gaze as it thirsts.
Bright o'er the blooming meadow the changeable colors are gleaming,
But the strife, full of charms, in its own grace melts away
Freely the plain receives me, with carpet far away...

Farewell! the beauteous sun is sinking fast,
The moon lifts up her head;
Farewell! mute night o'er earth's wide round at last
Her darksome raven-wing has spread.

Across the wintry plain no echoes float,
Save, from the rock's deep womb,
The murmuring streamlet, and the screech-owl's note,
Arising from the forest's gloom.

The fish repose within the watery deeps,
The snail draws in his head;
The dog beneath the table calmly sleeps,
My wife is slumbering in her bed.

A hearty welcome to ye, brethren mine!
Friends of my life's young spring!
Perchance around a flask of Rhenish wine
Ye're gathered now, in joyous ring.

The brimming goblet's bright and purple beams
Mirror the world with joy,
And pleasure from the golden grape-juice glea...

The name of Wirtemberg they hold
To come from Wirth am berg [69], I'm told.
A Wirtemberger who ne'er drinks
No Wirtemberger is, methinks!

Three words will I name thee around and about,
From the lip to the lip, full of meaning, they flee;
But they had not their birth in the being without,
And the heart, not the lip, must their oracle be!
And all worth in the man shall forever be o'er
When in those three words he believes no more.

Man is made free! Man by birthright is free,
Though the tyrant may deem him but born for his tool.
Whatever the shout of the rabble may be
Whatever the ranting misuse of the fool
Still fear not the slave, when he breaks from his chain,
For the man made a freeman grows safe in his gain.

And virtue is more than a shade or a sound,
And man may her voice, in this being, obey;
And though ever he slip on the stony ground,
Yet ever again to the godlike way,
To the s...

Three errors there are, that forever are found
On the lips of the good, on the lips of the best;
But empty their meaning and hollow their sound
And slight is the comfort they bring to the breast.
The fruits of existence escape from the clasp
Of the seeker who strives but those shadows to grasp

So long as man dreams of some age in this life
When the right and the good will all evil subdue;
For the right and the good lead us ever to strife,
And wherever they lead us the fiend will pursue.
And (till from the earth borne, and stifled at length)
The earth that he touches still gifts him with strength! [56]

So long as man fancies that fortune will live,
Like a bride with her lover, united with worth;
For her favors, alas! to the mean she will give
And virtue ...