And every lamp from the stage to the porch,
Must be lighted by Venus, from Cupid's torch;
Never a moment, if rules can tempt ye,
Never a moment my scene is empty!
Here is the babe in his leading-strings-
Here is the boy at play;

Here is the passionate youth with wings,
Like a bird's on a stormy day,

To and fro, waving here and there,
Down to the earth and aloft through the air;
Now see the man, as for combat enter-
Where is the peril he fears to adventure?
See how the puppets speed on to the race,
Each his own fortune pursues in the chase;
How many
the rivals, how narrow the space!
But, hurry and scurry, O mettlesome game!
The cars roll in thunder, the wheels rush in flame.
How the brave dart onward, and pant and glow!
How the craven behind them come creeping slow-
Ha ha! see how Pride gets a terrible fall!
See how Prudence, or Cunning, out-races them all!
See how at the goal, with her smiling eyes,
Ever waits Woman to give the prize!

WB

THE MINSTRELS OF OLD.

HERE now the minstrel of the large renown, Rapturing with living words the heark'ning throng;

Charming the Man to Heaven, and earthward down Charming the God,-who wing'd the soul with

song?

Yet lives the minstrel, not the deeds;-the lyre
Of old demands ears that of old believed it—
Bards of bless'd time-how flew your living fire
From lip to lip! how race from race received it !
As if a God, men hallow'd with devotion-

What GENIUS, speaking, shaping, wrought below,
The glow of song inflamed the ear's emotion,
The ear's emotion gave the song the glow;
Each nurturing each-back on his soul-its tone
Whole nations echoed with a rapture-peal;
Then all around the heavenly splendor shone

Which now the heart, and scarce the heart can feel.

THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE NEW CENTURY.

WHERE can Peace find a refuge ?-whither, say,

WH

Can Freedom turn?-lo, friend, before our view

The CENTURY rends itself in storm away,

And, red with slaughter, dawns on earth the New.

The girdle of the lands is loosen'd ;'-hurl'd

To dust the forms old Custom deem'd divine,-Safe from War's fury not the watery world;

Safe not the Nile-God nor the antique Rhine.
Two mighty nations make the world their field,
Deeming the world is for their heir-loom given ;
Against the freedom of all lands they wield
This-Neptune's trident; that-the Thund'rer's
leven.

Gold to their scales each region must afford;
And, as fierce Brennus in Gaul's early tale,
The Frank casts in the iron of his sword,

To poise the balance, where the right may fail— Like some huge Polypus, with arms that roam Outstretch'd for prey-the Briton spreads his reign;

And, as if Ocean were his household home,

Locks up the chambers of the liberal main.
On to the Pole where shines, unseen, the Star,
Onward his restless course unbounded flies;
Tracks every isle and every coast afar,

And undiscover'd leaves but-Paradise!
Alas, in vain on earth's wide chart, I ween,
Thou seek'st that holy realm, beneath the sky,
Where Freedom dwells in gardens ever green—
And blooms the Youth of fair Humanity!
O'er shores where sail ne'er rustled to the wind,

O'er the vast universe, may rove thy ken;

But in the universe thou canst not find
A space sufficing for ten happy men!

In the heart's holy stillness only beams

The shrine of refuge from life's stormy throng; Freedom is only in the land of Dreams;

And only blooms the Beautiful in Song!

That is the settled political system-the balance of power.

WE have now concluded the Poems composed in the Third or maturest Period of Schiller's life. From this portion only have been omitted, in the Translation, (besides some of the moral or epigrammatic sentences to which we have before alluded,) a very few pieces, which, whatever their merit in the original, would be wholly without interest for the general English reader,-viz., the satirical lines on Shakspeare's Translators-"The Philosopher," "The Rivers," "The Jeremiad," "The Remonstrance," addressed to Goethe on producing Voltaire's "Mahomet" on the Stage, in which the same ideas have been already expressed by Schiller in poems of more liberal and general application; and three or four occasional pieces in albums, &c.

The "Farewell to the Reader," which property belongs to this division of the Poems, has been transferred, as the fitting conclusion, to the last place in the entire translation.