The holy crown which Fame was wreathing,
    Behold! the mean man’s temples wore! 
  And but for one short spring-day breathing,
    Bloom’d Love—­the Beautiful—­no more! 
  And ever stiller yet, and ever
    The barren path more lonely lay,
  Till waning Hope could scarcely quiver
    Along the darkly widening way.

  Who, loving, linger’d yet to guide me,
    When all her boon companions fled? 
  Who stands consoling still beside me,
    And follows to the House of Dread?
  Thine, Friendship! thine, the hand so tender—­
    Thine the balm dropping on the wound—­
  Thy task—­the load more light to render,
    O, earliest sought and soonest found!

  And thou, so pleased with her uniting
    To charm the soul-storm into peace,
  Sweet Toil![6] in toil itself delighting,
    That more it labor’d, less could cease: 
  Though but by grains, thou aid’st the pile
    The vast Eternity uprears—­
  At least thou strik’st from Time, the while,
    Life’s debt—­the minutes, days, and years![7]

[Footnote 6:  That is to say—­the Poet’s occupation—­The Ideal.]

[Footnote 7:  Though the Ideal images of youth forsake us—­the Ideal still remains to the Poet.—­Nay, it is his task and his companion; unlike the worldly fantasies of fortune—­fame, and love—­the fantasies the Ideal creates are imperishable.  While, as the occupation of his life, it pays off the debt of time; as the exalter of life, it contributes to the building of eternity.]

* * * * *

THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL LIFE.

The first title of this Poem was “The Realm of Shadow.”  Perhaps in the whole range of German poetry there exists no poem which presents greater difficulties to the English translator.  The chief object of the present inadequate version has been to render the sense intelligible as well as the words.  The attempt stands in need of all the indulgence which the German scholar will readily allow that a much abler translator might reasonably require.

1

For ever fair, for ever calm and bright,
Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice—­
Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,
And ’mid the universal ruin, bloom
The rosy days of Gods—­
With Man, the choice,
Timid and anxious, hesitates between
The sense’s pleasure and the soul’s content;
While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,
The beams of both are blent.

2

Seek’st thou on earth the life of Gods to share,
Safe in the Realm of Death?—­beware
To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye;
Content thyself with gazing on their glow—­
Short are the joys Possession can bestow,
And in Possession sweet Desire will die. 
’Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound
Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river—­
She pluck’d the fruit of the unholy ground,
And so—­was Hell’s for ever!