The Poems of Schiller — Third period. Friedrich von Schiller

"Lo! thy flowers come back to thee —

          Thy child, sad mother, comes no more!"

         Alas! how long an age it seems

          Since all the earth I wandered over,

         And vainly, Titan, tasked thy beams

          The loved — the lost one — to discover!

         Though all may seek — yet none can call

          Her tender presence back to me

         The sun, with eyes detecting all,

          Is blind one vanished form to see.

         Hast thou, O Zeus! hast thou away

          From these sad arms my daughter torn?

         Has Pluto, from the realms of day,

          Enamored — to dark rivers borne?

         Who to the dismal phantom-strand

          The herald of my grief will venture?

         The boat forever leaves the land,

          But only shadows there may enter. —

         Veiled from each holier eye repose

          The realms where midnight wraps the dead,

         And, while the Stygian river flows,

          No living footstep there may tread!

         A thousand pathways wind the drear

          Descent; — none upward lead to-day; —

         No witness to the mother's ear

          The daughter's sorrows can betray.

         Mothers of happy human clay

          Can share at least their children's doom;

         And when the loved ones pass away,

          Can track — can join them — in the tomb!

         The race alone of heavenly birth

          Are banished from the darksome portals;

         The Fates have mercy on the earth,

          And death is only kind to mortals! 16

       Oh, plunge me in the night of nights,

          From heaven's ambrosial halls exiled!

         Oh, let the goddess lose the rights

          That shut the mother from the child!

         Where sits the dark king's joyless bride,

          Where midst the dead her home is made;

         Oh that my noiseless steps might glide,

          Amidst the shades, myself a shade!

         I see her eyes, that search through tears,

          In vain the golden light to greet;

         That yearn for yonder distant spheres,

          That pine the mother's face to meet!

         Till some bright moment shall renew

          The severed hearts' familiar ties;

         And softened pity steal in dew,

          From Pluto's slow-relenting eyes!

         Ah, vain the wish, the sorrows are!

          Calm in the changeless paths above

         Rolls on the day-god's golden car —

          Fast are the fixed decrees of Jove!

         Far from the ever-gloomy plain,

          He turns his blissful looks away.

         Alas! night never gives again

          What once it seizes as its prey!

         Till over Lethe's sullen swell,

          Aurora's rosy hues shall glow;

         And arching through the midmost hell

          Shine forth the lovely Iris-bow!

         And is there naught of her; no token —

          No pledge from that beloved hand?

         To tell how love remains unbroken,

          How far soever be the land?

         Has love no link, no lightest thread,

          The mother to the child to bind?

         Between the living and the dead,

          Can hope no holy compact find?

         No! every bond is not yet riven;

          We are not yet divided wholly;

         To us the eternal powers have given

          A symbol language, sweet and holy.

         When Spring's fair children pass away,

          When, in the north wind's icy air,

         The leaf and flower alike decay,

          And leave the rivelled branches bare,

         Then from Vertumnus' lavish horn

          I take life's seeds to strew below —

         And bid the gold that germs the corn

          An offering to the Styx to go!

         Sad in the earth the seeds I lay —

          Laid at thy heart, my child — to be

         The mournful tokens which convey

          My sorrow and my love to thee!

         But, when the hours, in measured dance,

          The happy smile of spring restore,

         Rife in the sun-god's golden glance

          The buried dead revive once more!

         The germs that perished to thine eyes,

          Within the cold breast of the earth,

         Spring up to bloom in gentler skies,

          The brighter for the second birth!

         The stem its blossom rears above —

          Its roots in night's dark womb repose —

         The plant but by the equal love

16

What a beautiful vindication of the shortness of human life!