The Poems of Schiller — Third period. Friedrich von Schiller

For ages the stone

          In the quarry may lurk,

         An instant alone

          Can suffice to the work;

         An impulse give birth

          To the child of the soul,

         A glance stamp the worth

          And the fame of the whole. 4

       On the arch that she buildeth

          From sunbeams on high,

         As Iris just gildeth,

          And fleets from the sky,

         So shineth, so gloometh

          Each gift that is ours;

         The lightning illumeth —

          The darkness devours! 5

      THE LAY OF THE MOUNTAIN

      [The scenery of Gotthardt is here personified.]

         To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,

          The life and death winding dizzy between;

         In thy desolate way, grim with menace and wrath,

          To daunt thee the spectres of giants are seen;

         That thou wake not the wild one 6, all silently tread —

         Let thy lip breathe no breath in the pathway of dread!

         High over the marge of the horrible deep

          Hangs and hovers a bridge with its phantom-like span, 7

       Not by man was it built, o'er the vastness to sweep;

          Such thought never came to the daring of man!

         The stream roars beneath — late and early it raves —

         But the bridge, which it threatens, is safe from the waves.

         Black-yawning a portal, thy soul to affright,

          Like the gate to the kingdom, the fiend for the king —

         Yet beyond it there smiles but a land of delight,

          Where the autumn in marriage is met with the spring.

         From a lot which the care and the trouble assail,

         Could I fly to the bliss of that balm-breathing vale!

         Through that field, from a fount ever hidden their birth,

          Four rivers in tumult rush roaringly forth;

         They fly to the fourfold divisions of earth —

          The sunrise, the sunset, the south, and the north.

         And, true to the mystical mother that bore,

         Forth they rush to their goal, and are lost evermore.

         High over the races of men in the blue

          Of the ether, the mount in twin summits is riven;

         There, veiled in the gold-woven webs of the dew,

          Moves the dance of the clouds — the pale daughters of heaven!

         There, in solitude, circles their mystical maze,

         Where no witness can hearken, no earthborn surveys.

         August on a throne which no ages can move,

          Sits a queen, in her beauty serene and sublime, 8

      The diadem blazing with diamonds above

          The glory of brows, never darkened by time,

         His arrows of light on that form shoots the sun —

         And he gilds them with all, but he warms them with none!

      THE ALPINE HUNTER

         Wilt thou not the lambkins guard?

          Oh, how soft and meek they look,

         Feeding on the grassy sward,

          Sporting round the silvery brook!

         "Mother, mother, let me go

         On yon heights to chase the roe!"

         Wilt thou not the flock compel

          With the horn's inspiring notes?

         Sweet the echo of yon bell,

          As across the wood it floats!

         "Mother, mother, let me go

         On yon heights to hunt the roe!"

         Wilt thou not the flow'rets bind,

          Smiling gently in their bed?

         For no garden thou wilt find

          On yon heights so wild and dread.

         "Leave the flow'rets, — let them blow!

         Mother, mother, let me go!"

         And the youth then sought the chase,

          Onward pressed with headlong speed

         To the mountain's gloomiest place, —

          Naught his progress could impede;

         And before him, like the wind,

         Swiftly flies the trembling hind!

         Up the naked precipice

          Clambers she, with footsteps light,

         O'er the chasm's dark abyss

          Leaps with spring of daring might;

         But behind, unweariedly,

         With his death-bow follows he.

         Now upon the rugged top

          Stands she, — on the loftiest height,

         Where the cliffs abruptly stop,

          And the path is lost to sight.

         There

4

The idea diffused by the translator through this and the preceding stanza is more forcibly condensed by Schiller in four lines.

5

"And ere a man hath power to say, 'behold,'

The jaws of Darkness do devour it up,

So quick bright things come to confusion." —

SHAKESPEARE.

The three following ballads, in which Switzerland is the scene, betray their origin in Schiller's studies for the drama of William Tell.

6

The avalanche — the equivoque of the original, turning on the Swiss word Lawine, it is impossible to render intelligible to the English reader. The giants in the preceding line are the rocks that overhang the pass which winds now to the right, now to the left, of a roaring stream.

7

The Devil's Bridge. The Land of Delight (called in Tell "a serene valley of joy") to which the dreary portal (in Tell the black rock gate) leads, is the Urse Vale. The four rivers, in the next stanza, are the Reus, the Rhine, the Tessin, and the Rhone.

8

The everlasting glacier. See William Tell, act v, scene 2.