The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 05

WOULD I WERE FREE AS ARE MY DREAMS63 (1822)

  Would I were free as are my dreams,    Sequestered from the garish crowd  To glide by banks of quiet streams    Cooled by the shadow-drifting cloud!  Free to shake off this weary weight    Of human sin, and rest instead  On nature's heart inviolate—    All summer singing o'er my head!  There would I never disembark,    Nay, only graze the flowery shore  To pluck a rose beneath the lark,    Then go my liquid way once more,  And watch, far off, the drowsy lines    Of herded cattle crop and pass,  The vintagers among the vines,    The mowers in the dewy grass;  And nothing would I drink or eat    Save heaven's clear sunlight and the spring  Of earth's own welling waters sweet,    That never make the pulses sting.* * * * *

SONNET64 (1822)

  Oh, he whose pain means life, whose life means pain,    May feel again what I have felt before;    Who has beheld his bliss above him soar  And, when he sought it, fly away again;  Who in a labyrinth has tried in vain,    When he has lost his way, to find a door;    Whom love has singled out for nothing more  Than with despondency his soul to bane;  Who begs each lightning for a deadly stroke,    Each stream to drown the heart that cannot heal  From all the cruel stabs by which it broke;    Who does begrudge the dead their beds like steel  Where they are safe from love's beguiling yoke—    He knows me quite, and feels what I must feel.

1

From Addresses on Religion (Discourse IV).

2

This refers to the second book, which takes the form of a dialogue between the inquirer and a Spirit.

3

An allusion to the second book.

4

The audience gathered in the building of the Royal Academy at Berlin.—ED.

5

J.G. Hamann. Hellenistische Briefe I, 189.

6

Goethe. Werke (1840) xxx., 352. Mr. Ward's translation of Goethe's "Essays on Art," p. 76.

7

Selections translated by Margarete Münsterberg.

8

Permission George Bell & Son, London.

9

Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company, Ltd., London.

10

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

11

Translator: C.T. Brooks.

12

Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.

13

Translator: C.T. Brooks.

14

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

15

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

16

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

17

Translator: C.T. Brooks.

18

Translator: W.W. Skeat.

19

Translator: Henry W. Longfellow.

20

Translator: C.T. Brooks.

21

Translator: Percy Mackaye.

22

Translator: Alfred Baskerville.

23

Translator: W.W. Skeat. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

24

Translator: W.W. Skeat. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

25

Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company, Ltd., London.

26

Translator: W.H. Furness.

27

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

28

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

29

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

30

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

31

Translator: C.T. Brooks.

32

Translator: W.H. Furness.

33

Translator: Henry W. Longfellow. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

34

Translator: Kate Freiligrath-Kroeker. Permission William Heinemann, London.

35

Translator: C.G. Leland. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

36

Translator: Alfred Baskerville.

37

Translator: Alfred Baskerville.

38

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

39

Translator: Alfred Baskerville

40

Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani. From A Sheaf of Poems, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.

41

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

42

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

43

From the Foreign Quarterly

44

Chapters 2, 6, 8.

45

An imaginary musical enthusiast of whom Hoffmann has written much; under the fiery, sensitive, wayward character of this crazy bandmaster, presenting, it would seem, a shadowy likeness of himself. The Kreisleriana occupy a large space among these Fantasy-pieces; and Johannes Kreisler is the main figure in Kater Murr, Hoffmann's favorite but unfinished work. In the third and last volume, Kreisler was to end, not in composure and illumination, as the critics would have required, but in utter madness: a sketch of a wild, flail-like scarecrow, dancing vehemently and blowing soap-bubbles, and which had been intended to front the last title-page, was found among Hoffmann's papers, and engraved and published in his Life and Remains.

46

Permission Bernhard Tauchnitz, Leipzig.

47

Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.

48

Translator: John Oxenford. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

49

Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani. From A Sheaf of Poems, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.

50

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

This is a working-over of an old popular song in imitation of the swallow's cry, found in various dialect-forms in different parts of Germany. The most widespread version is:

  Wenn ich wegzieh', wenn ich wegzieh',    Sind Kisten and Kasten voll!'  Wann ich wiederkomm', wann ich wiederkomm',    Ist alles verzehrt.

51

Translator: Alfred Baskerville.

52

Translator: Bayard Taylor. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

53

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

54

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

55

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

56

Translator: H.W. Dulcken. From Book of German Songs, permission Ward, Lock & Company, Ltd., London.

57

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.

58

Translator: A.I. du P. Coleman.

59

Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company, Ltd., London.

60

Translator: Lord Lindsay. From Ballads, Songs and Poems.

61

Translators: Bayard Taylor and Lilian Bayard Taylor Kiliani. From A Sheaf of Poems, permission R.G. Badger, Boston.

62

Translator: Henry W. Longfellow. From Representative German Poems, Henry Holt & Co., New York.

63

Translator: Percy Mackaye.

64

Translator: Margarete Münsterberg.