lancholy.)

Gentle crook! oh that I never
For the sword had bartered thee!
Sacred oak! why didst thou ever
From thy branches speak to me?
Would that thou to me in splendor,
Queen of heaven, hadst ne'er come down!
Take--all claim I must surrender,--
Take, oh take away thy crown!

Ah, I open saw yon heaven,
Saw the features of the blest!
Yet to earth my hopes are riven,
In the skies they ne'er can rest!
Wherefore make me ply with ardor
This vocation, terror-fraught?
Would this heart were rendered harder.
That by heaven to feel was taught!

To proclaim Thy might sublime
Those select, who, free from crime,
In Thy lasting mansions stand;
Send Thou forth Thy spirit-band,
The immortal, and the pure,
Feelingless, from tears secure
Never choose a maiden fair,
Shepherdess' weak spirit ne'er!

Kings' dissensions wherefore dread I,
Why the fortune of the fight?
Guilelessly my lambs once fed I
On the silent mountain-height.
Yet Thou into life didst bear me,
To the halls where monarchs throne.
In the toils of guilt to snare me--
Ah, the choice was not mine own!

FOOTNOTES.

[1] The allusion in the original is to the seemingly magical power
possessed by a Jew conjuror, named Philadelphia, which would not be
understood in English.

[2] This most exquisite love poem is founded on the platonic notion, that
souls were united in a pre-existent state, that love is the yearning
of the spirit to reunite with the spirit with which it formerly made
one--and which it discovers on earth. The idea has often been made
subservient to poetry, but never with so earnest and elaborate a beauty.

[3] "Und Empfindung soll mein Richtschwert seyn." A line of great
vigor in the original, but which, if literally translated, would seem
extravagant in English.

[4] Joseph, in the original.

[5] The youth's name was John Christian Weckherlin.

[6] Venus.

[7] Originally Laura, this having been one of the "Laura-Poems," as
the Germans call them of which so many appeared in the Anthology (see
Preface). English readers will probably not think that the change is
for the better.

[8] Tityus.

[9] This concluding and fine strophe is omitted in the later editions
of Schiller's "Poems."

[10] Hercules who recovered from the Shades Alcestis, after she had
given her own life to save her husband, Admetus. Alcestis, in the hands
o