Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18.djvu/46

38 books,—whole forming a mass of poetic wisdom, coupled with such amazing wealth of illustration, that this one volume, if sufficiently diluted, would make several thousand "Proverbial Philosophies." It is not a book to read continuously, but one which, I should imagine, no educated German could live without possessing. I never open its pages without the certainty of refreshment. Its tone is quietistic, as might readily be conjectured, but it is the calm of serene reflection, not of indifference. No work which Rückert ever wrote so strongly illustrates the incessant activity of his mind. Half of these six thousand couplets are terse and pithy enough for proverbs, and their construction would have sufficed for the lifetime of many poets.

With the exception of "Kaiser Barbarossa," and two or three other ballads, the amatory poems of Rückert have attained the widest popularity among his countrymen. Many of the love-songs have been set to music by Mendelssohn and other composers. Their melody is of that subtile, delicate quality which excites a musician's fancy, suggesting the tones to which the words should be wedded. Precisely for this reason they are most difficult to translate. The first stanza may, in most cases, be tolerably reproduced; but as it usually contains a refrain, which is repeated to a constantly varied rhyme, throughout the whole song or poem, the labor at first becomes desperate, and then impossible. An example (the original of which I possess, in the author's manuscript) will best illustrate this particular difficulty. Here the metre and the order of rhyme have been strictly preserved, except in the first and third lines.

He came to meet me

In rain and thunder;

My heart 'gan beating

In timid wonder:

Could I guess whether

Thenceforth together

Our paths should run, so long asunder?

He came to meet me

In rain and thunder,

With guile to cheat me,—

My heart to plunder.

Was't mine he captured?

Or his I raptured?

Half-way both met, in bliss and wonder!

He came to meet me

In rain and thunder:

Spring-blessings greet me

Spring-blossoms under.

What though he leave me?

No partings grieve me,—

No path can lead our hearts asunder!"

The Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan, (whose translations from the German comprise both the best and the worst specimens I have yet found,) has been successful in rendering one of Rückert's ghazels. I am specially tempted to quote it, on account of the curious general resemblance (accidental, no doubt) which Poe's "Lenore" bears to it.

I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:

'T was Eden's light on earth awhile, and then no more.

Amid the throng she passed along the meadow-floor;

Spring seemed to smile on earth awhile, and then no more,

But whence she came, which way she went, what garb she wore,

I noted not; I gazed awhile, and then no more.

I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:

'T was Paradise on earth awhile, and then no more.

Ah! what avail my vigils pale, my magic lore?

She shone before mine eyes awhile, and then no more.

The shallop of my peace is wrecked on Beauty's shore;

Near Hope's fair isle it rode awhile, and then no more.

I saw her once, a little while, and then no more:

Earth looked like Heaven a little while, and then no more.

Her presence thrilled and lighted to its inmost core

My desert breast a little while, and then no more.

So may, perchance, a meteor glance at midnight o'er

Some ruined pile a little while, and then no more.

I saw her once, a little while and then no more:

The earth was Eden-land awhile, and then no more.

O, might I see but once again, as once before,

Through chance or wile, that shape awhile, and then no more!

Death soon would heal my grief: this heart, now sad and sore,

Would beat anew, a little while, and then no more!"

Here, nevertheless, something is sacrificed. The translation is by no means