LITMIR.BIZ

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through wide air the tempests sweep,

        As gush the springs from mystic deep,

              Or lone untrodden glen;

        So from dark hidden fount within

        Comes SONG, its own wild world to win

              Amidst the souls of men!

        Swift with the fire the minstrel glow'd,

          And loud the music swept the ear:—

        "Forth to the chase a Hero rode,

          To hunt the bounding chamois-deer;

        With shaft and horn the squire behind;—

        Through greensward meads the riders wind—

              A small sweet bell they hear.

        Lo, with the HOST, a holy man—

        Before him strides the sacristan,

              And the bell sounds near and near.

        "The noble hunter down-inclined

          His reverent head and soften'd eye,

        And honor'd with a Christian's mind

          The Christ who loves humility!

        Loud through the pasture, brawls and raves

        A brook—the rains had fed the waves,

              And torrents from the bill.

        His sandal-shoon the priest unbound,

        And laid the Host upon the ground,

              And near'd the swollen rill!

        "What wouldst thou, priest?" the Count began,

          As, marveling much, he halted there,

        "Sir Count, I seek a dying man,

          Sore-hungering for the heavenly fare.

        The bridge that once its safety gave,

        Rent by the anger of the wave,

              Drifts down the tide below.

        Yet barefoot now, I will not fear

        (The soul that seeks its God, to cheer)

              Through the wild wave to go!"

        "He gave that priest the knightly steed,

          He reach'd that priest the lordly reins,

        That he might serve the sick man's need,

          Nor slight the task that heaven ordains.

        He took the horse the squire bestrode;

              On to the sick, the priest!

        And when the morrow's sun was red,

        The servant of the Savior led

              Back to its lord the beast.

        "'Now Heaven forfend!' the Hero cried,

          'That e'er to chase or battle more

        These limbs the sacred steed bestride

          That once my Maker's image bore;

        If not a boon allow'd to thee,

        Thy Lord and mine its Master be,

              My tribute to the King,

        From whom I hold, as fiefs, since birth,

        Honor, renown, the goods of earth,

              Life and each living thing!"

        "'So may the God, who faileth never

          To hear the weak and guide the dim,

        To thee give honor here and ever,

          As thou hast duly honor'd Him!'

        Far-famed ev'n now through Swisserland

        Thy generous heart and dauntless hand;

              And fair from thine embrace

        Six daughters bloom,[21] six crowns to bring,

        Blest as the daughters of a KING,

              The mothers of a RACE!"

        The mighty Kaiser heard amazed!

          His heart was in the days of old;

        Into the minstrel's heart he gazed,

          That tale the Kaiser's own had told.

        Yes, in the bard the priest he knew,

        And in the purple veil'd from view

              The gush of holy tears!

        A thrill through that vast audience ran,

        And every heart the godlike man

              Revering God—reveres!

      Wagner]

* * * * *

      FOOTNOTES:

      [Footnote 3: Though the Ideal images of youth forsake us, the Ideal itself still remains to the Poet. It is his task and his companion, for, unlike the Phantasies of Fortune, Fame, and Love, the Phantasies of the Ideal are imperishable. While, as the occupation of life, it pays off the debt of Time, as the exalter of life it contributes to the Building of Eternity.—TRANSLATOR.]

      [Footnote 4: "Die Gesalt"—Form. the Platonic Archetype.]

      [Footnote 5: This idea is often repeated, somewhat more clearly in the haughty philosophy of Schiller. He himself says, elsewhere—"In a fair soul each single action is not properly moral, but the whole character is moral. The fair soul has no other service than the instincts of its own beauty."—Translator]

      [Footnote 6: "Und es wallet, and siedet, und brauset, and zischt," etc. Goethe was particularly struck with the truthfulness of these lines, of which his personal observation at the Falls of the Rhine enabled him to judge. Schiller modestly owns his obligations to Homer's descriptions of Charybdis, Odyss. I., 12. The property of the higher order of imagination to reflect truth, though not familiar to experience, is singularly illustrated in this description. Schiller had never seen even a Waterfall.—TRANSLATOR.]

      [Footnote 7: The same rhyme as the preceding line in the original.]

      [Footnote 8: "—da kroch's heran," etc. The It in the original has been greatly admired. The poet thus vaguely represents the fabulous misshapen monster, the Polypus of the ancients.]

      [Footnote 9: The theatre.]

      [Footnote 10: This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antæus, the Son of Earth,—so long as the Earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,—so the soul contends in vain with evil—the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antæus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring), when bearing it from earth itself and stifling it in the higher air.—Translator.]

      [Footnote 11: Translated by Edward, Lord Lytton (Permission George

      Routledge & Sons.)]

      [Footnote 12: "I call the Living—I mourn the Dead—I break the Lightning." These words are inscribed on the Great Bell of the Minster of Schaffhausen—also on that of the Church of Art near Lucerne. There was an old belief in Switzerland that the undulation of air, caused by the sound of a Bell, broke the electric fluid of a thunder-cloud.]

      [Footnote 13: A piece of clay pipe,

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