* * * * *
'Tis night, and tempests whistle o'er the moor;
Oh, Spanish father, ope the door!
Deny me not the little boon I crave,
Thine order's vesture, and a grave!
Grant me a cell within thy convent-shrine—
Half of this world, and more, was mine;
The head that to the tonsure now stoops down
Was circled once by many a crown;
The shoulders fretted now with shirt of hair
Did once the imperial ermine wear.
Now am I as the dead, e'er death is come,
And sink in ruins like old Rome.
* * * * *
On Busento's grassy banks a muffled chorus echoes nightly,
While the swirling eddies answer and the wavelets ripple lightly.
Up and down the river, shades of Gothic warriors watch are keeping,
For they mourn their people's hero, Alaric, with sobs of weeping.
All too soon and far from home and kindred here to rest they laid him,
While in youthful beauty still his flowing golden curls arrayed him.
And along the river's bank a thousand hands with eager striving
Labored long, another channel for Busento's tide contriving.
Then a cavern deep they hollowed in the river-bed depleted,
Placed therein the dead king, clad in proof, upon his charger seated.
O'er him and his proud array the earth they filled, and covered loosely,
So that on their hero's grave the water-plants would grow profusely.
And again the course they altered of Busento's waters troubled;
In its ancient channel rushed the current—foamed, and hissed, and bubbled.
And the Goths in chorus chanted: "Hero, sleep! Tiny fame immortal
Roman greed shall ne'er insult, nor break thy tomb's most sacred portal!"
Thus they sang, and paeans sounded high above the fight's commotion;
Onward roll, Busento's waves, and bear them to the farthest ocean!
* * * * *
How I started up in the night, in the night,
Drawn on without rest or reprieval!
The streets with their watchmen were lost to my sight,
As I wandered so light
In the night, in the night,
Through the gate with the arch medieval.
[Illustration: THE MORNING HOUR]
The mill-brook rushed from its rocky height;
I leaned o'er the bridge in my yearning;
Deep under me watched I the waves in their flight,
As they glided so light
In the night, in the night,
Yet backward not one was returning.
O'erhead were revolving, so countless and bright,
The stars in melodious existence;
And with them the moon, more serenely bedight;
They sparkled so light
In the night, in the night,
Through the magical, measureless distance.
And upward I gazed in the night, in the night,
And again on the waves in their fleeting;
Ah woe! thou hast wasted thy days in delight;
Now silence, thou light,
In the night, in the night,
The remorse in thy heart that is beating.
* * * * *
Would I were free as are my dreams,
Sequestered from the garish crowd
To glide by banks of quiet streams
Cooled by the shadow-drifting cloud!
Free to shake off this weary weight
Of human sin, and rest instead
On nature's heart inviolate—
All summer singing o'er my head!
There would I never disembark,
Nay, only graze the flowery shore
To pluck a rose beneath the lark,
Then go my liquid way once more,
And watch, far off, the drowsy lines
Of herded cattle crop and pass,
The vintagers among the vines,
The mowers in the dewy grass;
And nothing would I drink or eat
Save heaven's clear sunlight and the spring
Of earth's own welling waters sweet,
That never make the pulses sting.
* * * * *
Oh, he whose pain means life, whose life means pain,
May feel again what I have felt before;
Who has beheld his bliss above him soar
And, when he sought it, fly away again;
Who in a labyrinth has tried in vain,
When he has lost his way, to find a door;
Whom love has singled out for nothing more
Than with despondency his soul to bane;
Who begs each lightning for a deadly stroke,
Each stream to drown the heart that cannot heal
From all the cruel stabs by which it broke;
Who does begrudge the dead their beds like steel
Where they are safe from love's beguiling yoke—
He knows me quite, and feels what I must feel.
[Footnote 1: From Addresses on Religion (Discourse IV).]
[Footnote 2: This refers to the second book, which takes the form of a dialogue between the inquirer and a Spirit.]
[Footnote 3: An allusion to the second book.]
[Footnote 4: The audience gathered in the building of the Royal
Academy at Berlin.—ED.]
[Footnote 5: J.G. Hamann. Hellenistische Briefe I, 189.]
[Footnote 6: Goethe. Werke (1840) xxx., 352. Mr. Ward's translation of Goethe's "Essays on Art," p. 76.]
[Footnote 7: Selections translated by Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 8: Permission George Bell & Son, London.]
[Footnote 9: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company,
Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 10: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 11: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 12: Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.]
[Footnote 13: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 14: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 15: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 16: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 17: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 18: Translator: W.W. Skeat.]
[Footnote 19: Translator: Henry W. Longfellow.]
[Footnote 20: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 21: Translator: Percy Mackaye.]
[Footnote 22: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 23: Translator: W.W. Skeat. From Representative German
Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 24: Translator: W.W. Skeat. From Representative German
Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 25: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock &
Company, Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 26: Translator: W.H. Furness.]
[Footnote 27: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg]
[Footnote 28: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 29: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 30: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 31: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]
[Footnote 32: Translator: W.H. Furness.]
[Footnote 33: Translator: Henry W. Longfellow. From Representative
German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 34: Translator: Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker. Permission William
Heinemann, London.]
[Footnote 35: Translator: C.G. Leland. From Representative German
Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 36: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 37: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 38: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman]
[Footnote 39: Translator: Alfred Baskerville]
[Footnote 40: Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor
Kiliani. From A Sheaf of Poems, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.]
[Footnote 41: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 42: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 43: From the Foreign Quarterly]
[Footnote 44: Chapters 2, 6, 8.]
[Footnote 45: An imaginary musical enthusiast of whom Hoffmann has written much; under the fiery, sensitive, wayward character of this crazy bandmaster, presenting, it would seem, a shadowy likeness of himself. The Kreisleriana occupy a large space among these Fantasy-pieces; and Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in Kater Murr, Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the third and last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in composure and illumination, as the critics would have required, but in utter madness: a sketch of a wild, flail-like scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bubbles, and which had been intended to front the last title-page, was found among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved and published in his Life and Remains.]
[Footnote 46: Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig.]
[Footnote 47: Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.]
[Footnote 48: Translator: John Oxenford. From Representative German
Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 49: Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor
Kiliani.
From A Sheaf of Poems, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.]
[Footnote 50: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.
This is a working-over of an old popular song in imitation of the swallow's cry, found in various dialect-forms in different parts of Germany. The most widespread version is:
Wenn ich wegzieh', wenn ich wegzieh',
Sind Kisten and Kasten voll!'
Wann ich wiederkomm', wann ich wiederkomm',
Ist alles verzehrt.]
[Footnote 51: Translator: Alfred Baskerville.]
[Footnote 52: Translator: Bayard Taylor. From Representative German
Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 53: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 54: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 55: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 56: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. From Book of German Songs, permission Ward, Lock & Company, Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 57: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]
[Footnote 58: Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.]
[Footnote 59: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company,
Ltd., London.]
[Footnote 60: Translator: Lord Lindsay. From Ballads, Songs and
Poems.]
[Footnote 61: Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor
Kiliani. From A Sheaf of Poems, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.]
[Footnote 62: Translator: Henry W. Longfellow. From Representative
German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.]
[Footnote 63: Translator: Percy MacKaye.]
[Footnote 64: Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.]