their exclusion more remarkable; but the concluding sentence of the criticism must not be passed over. "In the delineation of man-in that force of mind which wanders into the Infinite-in that disposition to fall out with the world, and in the striving to master it-in the want of susceptibility in the inward struggle of the Passions-in the endeavour to annihilate the dominion of the Senses, and to represent the pure moral law in his own person, we perceive the characteristic features of the Poet himself."

HONOUR to women! round Life they are wreathing
Roses, the fragrance of Heaven sweet-breathing,
Weaving and twining the garland of Love;
And, with the veil of the Graces concealing
Charms like their own, at the altars of Feeling
Watch the pure flame that was kindled above.

Ever from the bounds of Truth

Man rebellious turns aside,

While the stormy gusts of Youth

Drive him fierce on Passion's tide.
Distant shadows, self-deceiving,
Still he grasps in eager chase,
And the dream of Fancy's weaving
Follows through the starry space.

But with the charm of their magical glances
Women can win him still back from his trances,
Bid him return to the Present again.

They in the cottage retreat of their mother
Bashful abide, each embracing the other,

Nature's true Daughters-fair Piety's train.

Hostile is man's eager strife.
With his all-subduing might
Goes he boldly forth through Life,

Resting neither day nor night:
What he form'd again undoing,
Never are his wishes dead-

Never as the Hydra's head,
Falling still, is still renewing.

Woman, with glories more peaceful contented,
Gathers the flowers by the moment presented,
Carefully nursing, their life to prolong-

Freer than Man in her bonds of alliance,
Richer than he in the region of science,
And in the infinite circle of song.

Self-sufficing, proud and stern,

Men's cold bosoms never know
Hearts with hearts that mutual burn,
Rapture's sympathetic glow.
Theirs no sweet exchange of feeling,
Nor the joy that tears dispense;
Whilst the war of Life is steeling

Harder still their harden'd sense.

But, as when gently soft Zephyr is sighing,
Wake into music the barp-strings replying,
So woman's soul to the feelings is true.
By the mere tale of distress mov'd to anguish,
Heaves her sweet bosom-her eyes softly languish,
Glistening like pearl-drops with heavenly dew.

In the sphere of Man's command

Force prevails. The conquering glaive
Glitters in the Scythian's hand,
And the Persian stoops, a slave.
Wild desires impetuous raging

Urge the fierce intestine strife,
And hoarse Discord, battle-waging,
Mars the grace, the life of life.

But, with persuasive entreaty soft blending,
Woman, the sceptre of Habit extending,

Soothes the wild tumults that madden the soul; And the blind forces by Hate made to sever Teaches to join in glad concord for ever, Winning the fugitive back to the goal.

Die Macht des Gesanges.

THE MIGHT OF SONG.

"GOETHE loves to compare a certain mental condition, or inward experience, with the phænomena of the material world; Schiller is more prone to seek after a sensible substratum for an idea; and, since the superterrestrial is inexhaustible, and finds nothing to answer it in the material world, so he very often allows an abundance of images and similitudes to succeed each other, and, now and then, even throughout an entire poem, places a single idea in a chain of comparisons. It thus frequently happens that his ardent imagination hurries us on with sudden vehemence from one image to another, and so to a third, altogether dissimi

F

lar in species, so as to keep us in a state of powerful excitement, to the interruption of unity of aspect and symmetri. cal impression. In the present poem, all the ideas are conjoined with so many separate similitudes. First we have the mysterious origin of poetry brought to our senses through the medium of the mountain torrent, of which the traveller knows not whence it descends. Its power over the human heart is next compared with the Parcæ, in whose hands we are, and with Hermes who conducts the dead to the nether world, and who also brings them back again; then its might in elevating the soul to the ideal world is assimilated to the sublime impression made by some monstrous calamity which suddenly seizes us; and, finally, its services in bringing us back to nature from the cold rules of conventional life, is placed in apposition to the return of a lost child to its mother."

Humboldt, in his correspondence with Schiller, speaks of the sublime effect of the poem, and the "immeasurable profundity," which is opened to the mind by the stanza in which the poet is described as in alliance with the powers of Fate and the sharer of their mysterious influence. The two last lines of this stanza :

"Und wiegt es zwischen Ernst und Spiele
Auf schwanker Leiter der Gefühle,"-

he more particularly designates as possessing dible beauty and picturesqueness of imagery."

In the same passage of the correspondence, which is throughout excellent, and highly deserving the attention of the poetical German student, the critic, after paying a well merited tribute to the versification of the poem, strongly declares his opinion in favour of rhyme, in preference to the classical metres, to which Schiller was then beginning to attach himself, and more particularly in comparison with the elegiac composition entitled Der Tanz (“ the Dance,") which had then also been first submitted to his inspection. "Whatever Goethe may say of Rhyme," he

observes, "I would have you always adhere to it. I not only do not remember a single passage of your poems in which the rhyme has done injury to the sentiment, but also not one in which it has not been made visibly to aid and improve it."

A CATARACT from the clefts descending,
It comes with Thunder's mighty force,
Rude mountain-wrecks its rush attending,
And oaks uprooted track its course.
Entranc'd in soft voluptuous dread,
The traveller hears, in silence heeding;
He hears the roaring flood o'er-head,
Yet knows not whence the sound proceeding.
So stream the waves of Song, out-pouring
Through fountains hid from man's exploring.

Leagu'd with those awful powers that wind
The thread of life-a silent band-

Who can the minstrel's charm unbind?

His strains melodious who withstand?
How, with the rod's Hermetic spell,
He curbs the awaken'd heart's emotion !-
Now plunges in the abyss of Hell,
Now heavenward lifts in rapt Devotion;
And
sways, 'mid sport and earnest reeling,
Upon the tremulous scale of feeling.

-As if into the round of pleasure,

All suddenly with giant stride,
In mystic garb and ghostly measure,
Some dark prodigious Fate should glide!