STRAY LEAFLETS FROM THE OAK OF GERMAN POETRY. A FRESH GATHERING. FIRST GARLAND. POEMS BY JOSEPH CHRISTIAN BARON VON ZEDLITZ. (BARON V. ZEDLITZ was born in the year 1790, in the castle of Johannisberg, in Austrian Silesia. At sixteen years of age he entered the army, and distinguished himself as colonel of artillery in the battles of Regensburgh, Aspern, and Wagram. He resides at present in Vienna. His literary works are chiefly dramatic and lyrical: in general he exhibits great versatility of talent; but his peculiar bias is towards tragedy, elegy, and all the graver forms of poetical composition. His most popular poem is Die Todtenkranzen (Chaplets for the Dead). In this he represents himself as dreamily musing, upon a certain occasion, on the great problems of Life and Death, and the passions, aspirations, and probable destinies of mankind, when he is accosted in vision by the Genius of Indifference (a sort of sublimer Mephistopheles), who undertakes to prove to him that human happiness is but an empty sound, and the pursuit of it a delusion to which Wisdom should never yield itself. With this view he calls up before the poet's eye the lives and sufferings of many of the most renowned among the foremost characters of the world-Wallenstein and Napoleon of the warriors; of poets, Tasso, Petrarch, Shakspeare, and Byron; and of great philanthropists, George Canning, the Emperor Joseph II., and Maximilian, the late king of Bavaria. His arguments, however, fail to produce their designed effect; the poet, in the end, concluding that true nobleness "lies not so much in the success as in the struggle," and that though he may not be permitted to enter "the promised land,” it is, after all, something to be able to ascend the Mount Pisgah of human hope, and contemplate, even in imagination, the future country of the soul. I select, as the first of my extracts from his pages, a few of the stanzas on Byron, of whose "Childe Harold," I may here observe, he has given an excellent translation to the German public.) I. Byron. "Wouldst now behold the portrait of another Reared by pale monks long, long ago Amid its time-worn turret-crypts; the chill winds In its forsaken dells the darkling rill winds Along in silent sadness. below This is NEWSTEAD. "Come in! Look round! ... Low lie the once Exalted, Whose crested helmets oft shone here so proudly. Dark change! The intruder starts to note how loudly His echoing footfalls ring amid those vaulted All effigies that still remain To tell the tale of Newstead's bygone glory, Save One." The Genius vanished; but I felt he Would re-appear eftsoons again. Ay, One! I mused. This was his home: here dwelt He Whose name shall perish but with Song and Story! Here dwelt a Spirit ghastly, lone, gigantic! His voice was not the zephyr-breath of Summer, Which wooes the linden-boughs when Day grows dumber, And heaven is mirrored in the hushed Atlantic. No! 'twas the tempest's world-appalling peal, Which, when the mountains rock and reel, And Heaven turns black and Ocean white, Rolls through the eternal firmament in thunder. Man hears the din, and feels the shock, and trembles. Yet, now and then, through dunnest night Gleam bright blue spots, which nought on earth resembles For beauty, where the swoln clouds part asunder! A Fiend-God, who but mocks through termless ages While Virtue, bleeding and abandoned, wages He scorneth, he, the Poet, to inveigle Our souls by spells and symphonies entrancing; By night above the Dead Sea shores, To whom Earth seems one spacious grave, Who lists the thrilling notes of horn and clarion, And glances down to where in pomp imperial The standards of the nations wave, And catches up the sound of-knells funéreal, And scents and sees-a world o'erspread with carrion! What art thou-who and what-mysterious nature? Grey in thy misery:-thou from whom II. My Three Tormentors.* SONG OF A MANIAC. Three spirits there be who haunt me always, He sits on a barrel-a chaplet of laurel Wreathed around his globular head, And a royal and richly bubbling cup Of the blood that he drains from his victims' veins Oh, woe, woe, And sorrow, To me, to be His slave, Through every coming morrow, Low in an honorless grave! My second tormentor, a weazened old pigmy, His visage is wrinkled and dust-besprinkled, His gold is ever before his view; He worships it, he, and, alas! makes me And sorrow, To me, to be His slave, Through every coming morrow, Till years lay me low, Low in an honorless grave! The third-Oh! the third is a marvellous creature, His voice is rich as the song of the spheres ; But ah! what tragic unrest its magic Doth bring to the bosom who shall tell of? And then, his bright but mischievous eyes! And sorrow, To me, to be A slave To these through every morrow, Till years lay me low, Low in mine honorless grave! *These tormentors would appear from the verses to be Intemperance, Avarice, and (perhaps) Love; or Bacchus, Plutus, and Cupid. A POETICAL EPISTLE BY LEOPOLD FRIEDRICH GUNTHER VON GOECKINGK. (Gunther v. Göckingk is a poet of considerable pretensions, but his productions, which are chiefly moral and didactical, have for the most part been superseded of late by the works of the Classicists and Romauntists. He was a Prussian, a native of Gruningen, and filled with great credit several offices in the state, to which his talents had 1828. originally raised him. His death occurred in Wartenberg, Silesia, in In the Poetical Epistle-by no means an easy genre d'écrire to manage -he has perhaps no rival. The grace and grave humour of the following specimen of his powers will, I have no doubt, be fully appreciated by the reader.) To my Servant. Faithful Heinrich, I must tell thee plainly Watching Fortune's ever-turning wheel. Yet, when I behold mine altered idle Young ones riding on a beech-tree slip, As thou knowest, I sold my cows and white mare, Haste to meet me, ambling up the slope! * On a second reading of the final quatrain of this strophe, I am led to imagine that my translation is not accurate. V. Göckingk writes: "Wenn die Jungen kommen auf dem Stocke, The spirit of the sentiment would appear to be this "Yet, much as I may regret the loss of my own former finery, I quite forget that loss when I reflect on the changed circumstances of my poor children, and, in fact, then regard it as a Inatter of supreme indifference whether I go clothed in rags, or in the gayest dress that a Parisian tailor ever sent to Germany." Now his nag has vanished like my cows and Even my house, alas! is marked " For Sale," Therefore, trusty Heinrich, when thou addest Earnestness, that thou and I must part! Nay, defied her, neither peace nor war-tune Made her treat me better than the throng. With wax candles, when the sad truth is, Oft to get a rushlight even for his? How commission thee next year to pillage Leipsic's Book-fair of some tempting stall, While the worthiest workmen of my village Whom I crow o'er, have no books at all? Yet these torments, which Fakeer or Dervise Well might shrink from, I must undergo If I still retain thee in my service; Wherefore, arm thyself to meet the blow! Thou hast asked me oft in many a past hour "What is Wisdom?" Hear then! 'Tis, when Skill Fails and Man abandons us, to cast our Cares on Heaven, and do our duty still! If I have taught thee nought beside, I fain would Soul to Circumstance, for, certes, plain wood With mine own ten fingers, thou shalt see! As my guide, my lamp, my constant crutch, While wild winds raved round us and above, Than this poor though heart-sung lay of praise. |