Part 510 (1/2)

Man is in truth a poor creature,--I know it,--and fain would forget it; Therefore (how sorry I am!) came I, alas, unto thee!

THE DANAIDES.

Into the sieve we've been pouring for years,-- o'er the stone we've been brooding; But the stone never warms,--nor does the sieve ever fill.

THE SUBLIME SUBJECT.

'Tis thy Muse's delight to sing G.o.d's pity to mortals; But, that they pitiful are,--is it a matter for song?

THE ARTIFICE.

Wouldst thou give pleasure at once to the children of earth and the righteous?

Draw the image of l.u.s.t--adding the devil as well!

IMMORTALITY.

Dreadest thou the aspect of death! Thou wishest to live on forever?

Live in the whole, and when long thou shalt have gone, 'twill remain!

JEREMIADS.

All, both in prose and in verse, in Germany fast is decaying; Far behind us, alas, lieth the golden age now!

For by philosophers spoiled is our language--our logic by poets, And no more common sense governs our pa.s.sage through life.

From the aesthetic, to which she belongs, now virtue is driven, And into politics forced, where she's a troublesome guest.

Where are we hastening now? If natural, dull we are voted, And if we put on constraint, then the world calls us absurd.

Oh, thou joyous artlessness 'mongst the poor maidens of Leipzig, Witty simplicity come,--come, then, to glad us again!

Comedy, oh repeat thy weekly visits so precious, Sigismund, lover so sweet,--Mascarill, valet jocose!

Tragedy, full of salt and pungency epigrammatic,-- And thou, minuet-step of our old buskin preserved!

Philosophic romance, thou mannikin waiting with patience, When, 'gainst the pruner's attack, Nature defendeth herself!

Ancient prose, oh return,--so n.o.bly and boldly expressing All that thou thinkest and hast thought,--and what the reader thinks too All, both in prose and in verse, in Germany fast is decaying; Far behind us, alas, lieth the golden age now!

SHAKESPEARE'S GHOST.

A PARODY.

I, too, at length discerned great Hercules' energy mighty,-- Saw his shade. He himself was not, alas, to be seen.

Round him were heard, like the screaming of birds, the screams of tragedians, And, with the baying of dogs, barked dramaturgists around.

There stood the giant in all his terrors; his bow was extended, And the bolt, fixed on the string, steadily aimed at the heart.