The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03. Коллектив авторов

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        But I alone, alone am weeping;

          The sweet delusion mocks not me—

        Around these walls destruction sweeping

          More near and near I see!

        "A torch before my vision glows,

          But not in Hymen's hand it shines;

        A flame that to the welkin goes,

          But not from holy offering-shrines;

        Glad hands the banquet are preparing,

          And near, and near the halls of state

        I hear the God that comes unsparing;

          I hear the steps of Fate.

        "And men my prophet-wail deride!

          The solemn sorrow dies in scorn;

        And lonely in the waste, I hide

          The tortured heart that would forewarn.

        Amidst the happy, unregarded,

          Mock'd by their fearful joy, I trod;

        Oh, dark to me the lot awarded,

          Thou evil Pythian god!

        "Thine oracle, in vain to be,

          Oh, wherefore am I thus consign'd

        With eyes that every truth must see,

          Lone in the City of the Blind?

        Cursed with the anguish of a power

          To view the fates I may not thrall,

        The hovering tempest still must lower—

          The horror must befall!

        "Boots it the veil to lift, and give

          To sight the frowning fates beneath?

        For error is the life we live,

          And, oh, our knowledge is but death!

        Take back the clear and awful mirror,

          Shut from mine eyes the blood-red glare

        Thy truth is but a gift of terror

          When mortal lips declare.

        "My blindness give to me once more[18]—

          The gay dim senses that rejoice;

        The Past's delighted songs are o'er

          For lips that speak a Prophet's voice.

        To me the future thou hast granted;

          I miss the moment from the chain—

        The happy Present-Hour enchanted!

          Take back thy gift again!

        "Never for me the nuptial wreath

          The odor-breathing hair shall twine;

        My heavy heart is bow'd beneath

          The service of thy dreary shrine.

        My youth was but by tears corroded,—

          My sole familiar is my pain,

        Each coming ill my heart foreboded,

          And felt it first—in vain!

        "How cheer'ly sports the careless mirth—

          The life that loves, around I see;

        Fair youth to pleasant thoughts give birth—

          The heart is only sad to me.

        Not for mine eyes the young spring gloweth,

          When earth her happy feast-day keeps;

        The charm of life who ever knoweth

          That looks into the deeps?

        "Wrapt in thy bliss, my sister, thine

          The heart's inebriate rapture-springs;—

        Longing with bridal arms to twine

          The bravest of the Grecian kings.

        High swells the joyous bosom, seeming

          Too narrow for its world of love,

        Nor envies, in its heaven of dreaming,

          The heaven of gods above!

        "I too might know the soft control

          Of one the longing heart could choose,

        With look which love illumes with soul—

          The look that supplicates and woos.

        And sweet with him, where love presiding

          Prepares our hearth, to go—but, dim,

        A Stygian shadow, nightly gliding,

          Stalks between me and him!

        "Forth from the grim funereal shore,

          The Hell-Queen sends her ghastly bands;

        Where'er I turn—behind—before—

          Dumb in my path—a Spectre stands!

        Wherever gayliest, youth assembles—

          I see the shades in horror clad,

        Amidst Hell's ghastly People trembles

          One soul for ever sad!

        "I see the steel of Murder gleam—

          I see the Murderer's glowing eyes—

        To right—to left, one gory stream—

          One circling fate—my flight defies!

        I may not turn my gaze—all seeing,

          Foreknowing all, I dumbly stand—

        To close in blood my ghastly being

          In the far strangers' land!"

        Hark! while the sad sounds murmur round,

          Hark, from the Temple-porch, the cries!—

        A wild, confused, tumultuous sound!—

          Dead the divine Pelides lies!

        Grim Discord rears her snakes devouring—

          The last departing god hath gone!

        And, womb'd in cloud, the thunder, lowering,

          Hangs black on Ilion.

      RUDOLPH OF HAPSBURG (1803)

      A BALLAD

      [Hinrichs properly classes this striking ballad (together with the yet grander one of the "Fight with the Dragon") amongst those designed to depict and exalt the virtue of Humility. The source of the story is in Ægidius Tschudi, a Swiss chronicler; and Schiller appears to have adhered, with much fidelity, to the original narrative.]