The Works of Frederick Schiller Part 527

SCENE--A hall prepared for a festival. The pillars are covered with festoons of flowers; flutes and hautboys are heard behind the scene.

JOAN OF ARC (soliloquizing).

Each weapon rests, war's tumults cease to sound, While dance and song succeed the b.l.o.o.d.y fray; Through every street the merry footsteps bound, Altar and church are clad in bright array, And gates of branches green arise around, Over the columns twine the garlands gay; Rheims cannot hold the ever-swelling train That seeks the nation-festival to gain.

All with one joyous feeling are elate, One single thought is thrilling every breast; What, until now, was severed by fierce hate, Is by the general rapture truly blessed.

By each who called this land his parent-state, The name of Frenchman proudly is confessed; The glory is revived of olden days, And to her regal son France homage pays.

Yet I who have achieved this work of pride, I cannot share the rapture felt by all: My heart is changed, my heart is turned aside, It shuns the splendor of this festival; 'Tis in the British camp it seeks to hide,-- 'Tis on the foe my yearning glances fall; And from the joyous circle I must steal, My bosom's crime o'erpowering to conceal.

Who? I? What! in my bosom chaste Can mortal's image have a seat?

This heart, by heavenly glory graced,-- Dares it with earthly love to beat?

The saviour of my country, I,-- The champion of the Lord Most High, Own for my country's foe a flame-- To the chaste sun my guilt proclaim, And not be crushed beneath my shame?

(The music behind the scene changes into a soft, melting melody.)

Woe! oh woe! what strains enthralling!

How bewildering to mine ear Each his voice beloved recalling, Charming up his image dear!

Would that battle-tempests bound me!

Would that spears were whizzing round me In the hotly-raging strife!

Could my courage find fresh life!

How those tones, those voices blest Coil around my bosom burning All the strength within my breast Melting into tender yearning, Into tears of sadness turning!

(The flutes are again heard--she falls into a silent melancholy.)

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] t.i.tyus.

[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 of Euripides (that woman-hater as he is called!) becomes the loveliest female creation in the Greek drama.

[11] i. e. Castor and Pollux are transferred to the stars, Hercules to Olympus, for their deeds on earth.

[12] Carlyle's Miscellanies, vol. iii, p. 47.

[13] Literally "Nierensteiner,"--a wine not much known in England, and scarcely--according to our experience--worth the regrets of its respectable owner.

[14] In Schiller the eight long lines that conclude each stanza of this charming love-poem, instead of rhyming alternately as in the translation, chime somewhat to the tune of Byron's Don Juan--six lines rhyming with each other, and the two last forming a separate couplet.

In other respects the translation, it is hoped, is sufficiently close and literal.

[15] The peach.

[16] Sung in "The Parasite," a comedy which Schiller translated from Picard--much the best comedy, by the way, that Picard ever wrote.

[17] The idea diffused by the translator through this and the preceding stanza is more forcibly condensed by Schiller in four lines.

[18] "And ere a man hath power to say, "behold,"

The jaws of Darkness do devour it up, So quick bright things come to confusion."-- SHAKESPEARE.

[19] The three following ballads, in which Switzerland is the scene, betray their origin in Schiller's studies for the drama of William Tell.

[20] The avalanche--the equivoque of the original, turning on the Swiss word Lawine, it is impossible to render intelligible to the English reader. The giants in the preceding line are the rocks that overhang the pa.s.s which winds now to the right, now to the left, of a roaring stream.

[21] The Devil's Bridge. The Land of Delight (called in Tell "a serene valley of joy") to which the dreary portal (in Tell the black rock gate) leads, is the Urse Vale. The four rivers, in the next stanza, are the Reus, the Rhine, the Tessin, and the Rhone.

[22] The everlasting glacier. See William Tell, act v, scene 2.

[23] This has been paraphrased by Coleridge.

[24] Ajax the Less.