-the soul
Which the god breathes in him, he can bestow
In turn upon the listener--if his breast
The blessing feel, thy heart is in that blessing blest.

The busy mart let Justice still control,
Weighing the guerdon to the toil!--What then?
A god alone claims joy--all joy is his,
Flushing with unsought light the cheeks of men.
Where is no miracle, why there no bliss!
Grow, change, and ripen all that mortal be,
Shapen'd from form to form, by toiling time;
The Blissful and the Beautiful are born
Full grown, and ripen'd from Eternity--
No gradual changes to their glorious prime,
No childhood dwarfs them, and no age has worn.--
Like Heaven's, each earthly Venus on the sight
Comes, a dark birth, from out an endless sea;
Like the first Pallas, in maturest might,
Arm'd, from the Thunderer's brow, leaps forth each Thought of Light.

* * * * *

We have now, with few exceptions, translated all the principal poems
comprised in the third, or maturest period of Schiller's life. We
here pass back to the poems of his youth. The contrast in tone,
thought, and spirit, between the compositions of the first and the
third period, in the great poet's intellectual career, is
sufficiently striking. In the former, there is little of that
majestic repose of strength so visible in the latter; but there is
infinitely more fire and action--more of that lavish and exuberant
energy which characterized the earlier tales of Lord Byron, and
redeemed, in that wonderful master of animated and nervous style, a
certain poverty of conception by a vigour and _gusto_ of execution,
which no English poet, perhaps, has ever surpassed. In his poems
lies the life, and beats the heart, of Schiller. They conduct us
through the various stages of his spiritual education, and indicate
each step in the progress. In this division, _effort_ is no less
discernible than power--both in language and thought there is a
struggle at something not yet achieved, and not, perhaps, even yet
definite and distinct to the poet himself. Here may be traced,
though softened by the charm of genius, (which softens all things,)
the splendid errors that belong to a passionate youth, and that give
such distorted grandeur to the giant melodrama of "The Robbers." But
here are to be traced also, and in far clearer characters, the man's
strong heart, essentially human in its sympathies--the thoughtful
and earnest intellec