No roof is so lowly, no hovel so base, But he fills with a Heaven of Celestials the place.* 4. And as the inventive Son of Jove On the shield's orb plain and even 5. He comes from the new world's infant age, And, whilst on his frolic pilgrimage, With all races and times consorted: He has seen already four ages of men, And now he starts with the fifth again. * Stanza 3, Compare the Dithyrambe; also the Künstler. "Was die Natur auf ihrem grossen Gange," &c. + Stanza 4. "In des Augenblicks fluchtig verrauschenden Schall.” So, in the Prologue to Wallenstein, the Mimic Art is described as “Des Augenblicks geschwind verrauschende Schopfung.” 6. First, Saturn was ruler-the honest and trueThen To-day was the same as To-morrow; Then flourish'd the Shepherds-an innocent crew, Who neither knew labour nor sorrow. They lov'd-and in sooth they did nothing besideFor the Earth all their sustenance freely supplied. 7. Next, came Toil and Care-the contest began The Heroes, they lorded it over man, And the Weak with the Strong made alliance. The red bolt on the shores of Scamander was hurl'd, -But Beauty was ever the God of the world. 8. At length, from Strife came Victory's reign, But Fancy's age divine is o'er It is vanish'd away; it returns never more. * Stanza 8. Compare Die Geschlechter. "Nur die gesättige Kraft kehret zur Anmuth zuruck." Compare also the Götter Griechenlands with this and the following stanza. 9. The Gods descended from Heaven's throne Their splendid columns were broken; And then was born the Virgin's Son For our salvation's token. Light pleasures of sense were dispossess'd, 10. And the wanton Graces were driven away; But though Life thus gloomy and barbarous grew, 11. And the Muses their holy altar pure In the Troubadour's lay, and the Minstrel's strain. 12. Then may Bards and fair Dames in eternal band Aye working and weaving, hand in hand, So Love and the Muse, in blest Harmony strung, " Das Eleusische Fest. 1798. 'Ir was long a favourite thought of Schiller's," says his friend Humboldt, "to give an Epic form to the earliest civilization of Attica by means of foreign immigrations. The' Feast of Eleusis' was substituted in place of this design, which remained never executed according to its original intention." The scheme here referred to has relation to the period of 1795, when Schiller contemplated the abandonment of the Dramatic Art in order to devote himself exclusively to the Epic and Didactic forms of Poetry. It is needless in this place to follow the mind of the Poet through the several changes which led to the results we now have before us. It is equally unnecessary to dilate on the subject of the Poem, which will naturally recall to the Reader, and connect itself in his mind with his earlier production, Die Klage der Ceres. We here see the Goddess, in the course of her wanderings, moved with compassion for the sufferings of savage humanity; and the two parts into which the Poem is naturally divided—the first preceded and the last terminated by a choral stanza in the Trochaic measure, and divided by the interposition of a third stanza, also in the same joyous metre, are designed to exhibit the contrast between Man as in a state of Nature, and as improved by culture, closely following out the similar train of images presented by the Spaziergang, to which its studied resemblance is still further discernible in the name of the Bürgerlied, the title under which the Poem was first published in the Musenalmanach for the year 1799. So that, to conclude, in order to a full understanding of both Poems-the Spaziergang and the Eleusische Fest-they ought to be taken as mutually illustrative of each other. I. "BRIGHT golden rays of rich Harvest entwining, 1. Deep in mountain caverns hidden To the shipwreck'd Stranger, woe, And as stray'd she broken-hearted, No bright Temple's porch, in proof |