Dithyrambe.

THIS poem was originally entitled Der Besuch—“The Visit”and is one of the most joyous of Schiller's mythological fancies-like the An die Freude-the Triumph der Liebe, and other out-pourings of his imagination when stirred by the spirit of Grecian poetry. The closing idea is embodied in the little epigrammatic effusion of Zeus to Hercules.

1.

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the Celestials

Never alone.

Hardly does Bacchus descend to me, quaffing,
But the boy Cupid he brings with him, laughing:
Phoebus, the glorious, too, joins them in one.
They're nearing-they're coming—

The heavenly ones all:
With Gods it is filling-
Earth's temporal hall.

Grant me,

2.

Say, a mere earth-born,

How may I harbour

The heavenly choir ?

like yours, life eternal to live inWhat to the Gods can by mortals be given? Let me the airs of Olympus respire!

In Jupiter's mansion

Joy only doth dwell.

Oh fill it with Nectar,

And reach me the shell!

3.

Reach him the shell.

Pour forth to the poet,
Hebe, the wine !

Heavenly moisture his eyelids bedewing,
So hated Styx may he never be viewing-
Let him believe himself truly divine.
It purls and it bubbles,

The liquor so bright

It quiets the bosom,

And cleanses the sight.

An Emma.

THIS little simple effusion of a deserted Lover's melancholy exhibits a pleasing contrast to the more stormy sensations of youth on a similar occasion, as displayed in the lines An Minna, among the earlier poems.

FAR in misty grey enshrouded,
Now my vanish'd gladness lies;
One pure star alone, unclouded,
Still attracts my longing eyes.

Like the stars, alas! its light

Beams but through the gloom of night.

Had thy last long sleep oppress'd thee,
Had stern Death thine eye-lids closed,
Still my grief would have possess'd thee,
In my heart thou hadst reposed.
But thou livést, bright and free,
Livést-not, alas! to me.

Can sweet hopes of Love's inspiring,
Emma! can they transient prove?
What is past, long since expiring,
Emma! say, can that be Love?
Can its flame of heavenly glow
Perish, like our joys below?

FLORENCE.

POEMS OF THE SAME PERIOD

IN ELEGIAC METRE.

(1795.)

Der Spaziergang.

THE WALK-AN ELEGY.

THIS Poem, which was completed, as we find by the correspondence with Humboldt, about the month of September, 1795, and was first printed in the Musenalmanach for the ensuing year under the simple title of Die Elegie, deserves on every account the foremost station among the compositions of Schiller in imitation of the ancient Hexameter and Pentameter metre. That the same form of verse has not been uniformly maintained in the following version, and, still more, that it has been entirely departed from in the attempt to convey to the English reader the sense and spirit of some of the subsequent poems, requires an apology, for the general substance of which I beg leave to refer to what has been said in the preface. With regard to the present Poem in particular, I have to offer a further excuse for this deviation from my general rule of practice in the circumstance that Schiller himself, in one of his letters to Humboldt, expresses at least a doubt whether, even in German, the effect intended to be produced by the rapid changes of description and sentiment is not weakened by the uniformity of the measure; and, in following up the doubt so expressed, it has been my object to adapt the alteration of metre to the points of transition from (to employ the phraseology of German criticism) the objective to the subjective, and back again to the objective, parts of the performance; employing our usual English blank verse (with the exception of the opening stanza) as the vehicle

of the descriptive, while the state of reflection and sentiment into which the Poet insensibly glides from the observation of the scenery of Nature, and which might not unaptly have given to the Poem the title of "The Reverie," as more appropriate than either that of "The Walk" or "The Elegy," appears to be better suited to the original

metre.

An additional reason for seeking some mode of deviation from that original, presented itself in the recent version, which, although only privately printed, is ascribed by general reputation to Sir John Herschel, and which, for fidelity to the sense of the original, and for rhythmical precision and accuracy, leaves nothing to be desired in the same mode of transfusion. It was partly this consideration which prompted the experiment, which it remains for others to say whether successfully practised, of rhymed endings to the pentameter lines, continued about half way through the Poem, and that also of a few lines, interspersed here and there, defective in the second limb of the verse. A still different variety has been suggested, as calculated to relieve the monotony of the classical metre, when transfused into a modern language—namely, by throwing the accent on the penultimate, instead of the last syllable, of the pentameter, as is often the case in our ordinary pronunciation, without regard to the prosodiacal quantity-as (for example) in the line

"Nil mihi rescribas, attamen ipse véni”–

which might be thus rendered

"Send me no answer back: come but thyself untó me;" -but the difficulty presented itself, that, in a language possessed of no fixed rules of quantity, the accent is all we have to supply the place of it; and the accent being placed on the wrong syllable, consequently reduces the line to mere measured prose. The thought of adopting this suggestion has consequently, after some consideration, been abandoned.