And the Future yet concealeth,
What I seek, and what I will!
Mount on mount arose before me,
Torrents hemmed me every side,
But I built a bridge that bore me
O'er the roaring tempest-tide.
Toward the East I reached a river,
On its shores I did not rest;
Faith from Danger can deliver,
And I trusted to its breast.
Drifted in the whirling motion,

Seas themselves around me roll-
Wide and wider spreads the ocean,
Far and farther flies the goal.
Ah! the pathway is not given;
Ah! the goal I cannot near-
Earth will never meet the Heaven,
Never can the THERE be HERE!

NOTE.

THE two poems of "The Longing" and "The Pilgrim" belong to a class which may be said to allegorize Feeling, and the meaning, agreeably to the genius of allegory or parable, has been left somewhat obscure. The commentators agree in referring both poems to the illustration of the Ideal. "The Longing" represents the desire to escape from real world into the higher realms of being. "The Pilgrim" represents the active labor of the idealist to reach "the Golden Gate." The belief in what is beyond Reality is necessary to all who would escape from the Real; and in "The Longing" it is intimated that that belief may attair

the end. But the Pilgrim, after all his travail, finds that the earth will never reach the heaven, and the There never can be Here. Many readers (especially in England) will be inclined to give to the two poems an interpretation at once loftier and more familiar, and to regard them as the expression of the natural human feeling-common not to poets alone, but to us all-the human feeling which approaches to an instinct, and in which so many philosophers have recognized the inward assurance of a hereafter, viz,. the desire to escape from the coldness and confinement, "the valley and the cloud," of actual life, into the happier world which smiles, in truth, evermore upon those who believe that it exists: for the desire of the poet is here identical with the desire of the religious man. He who longs for another world-only to be attained by abstraction from the low desires of this-longs for what the Christian strives for.

SEE

THE DANCE.

EE how the couples whirl along the Dance's buoyant tide;

And scarcely touch with wingëd feet the floor on which they glide,

Oh, are they flying shadows, from material forms set free?

Or elfin shapes, whose airy rings the summer moonbeams see?

As, by the gentle zephyr blown, some light mist flees in air,

Or as the skiff that softly rocks, when silver waves are fair,

So doth the docile footstep on the wave of measure

bound,

So doth the form ethereal float on murmuring airs of sound,

See now, as if intent to break the light chain of the

dance,

Forth swinging from the crowded throng a bolder pair advance,

The path they leave behind them lost-wide opes the path beyond,

The way unfolds or closes up as by a magic wand. Now snatched from sight—and now the press of each

impeding all,

That moving world's symmetric scheme in ruin seems to fall,

No!-disentangled glides the knot, the gay disorder ranges―

The only system ruling here—a grace that ever changes.

For aye destroyed-for aye renewed, that charm'd creation rolls

Its dizzy course, and every change one tranquil law controls.

Say, what upon the reeling maze the restless life bestows,

And modulates the movement to the order of repose? That each, a ruler to himself, doth but himself obey, Yet through the hurrying course still keeps his own appointed way?

Would'st know?-'tis Harmony divine; the Power whose sovereign pleasure

Compels the eager bound of each into the social

measure.

That doth, like Nemesis, and with sweet rhythm, the golden rein,1

The impetuous strength of wild delight, attuned to grace, restrain.

And comes THE WORLD'S wide harmony in vain upon thine ears?

The stream of music borne aloft from yonder choral spheres ?

Perceiv'st thou not the measure which Eternal Na

ture keeps ?

The whirling Dance forever held in yonder azure

deeps?

The suns that wheel in varying maze?—That measure thou discernest?

No! Thou canst honor that in sport which thou forget'st in earnest.2

1"Such sweet compulsion doth in music lie,
To lull the daughters of Necessity,
And keep unsteady Nature to her law,
And the low world in measured motion draw,
After the heavenly tune which none can hear
Of human mold, with gross unpurgèd ear."

MILTON'S Arcades.

2 This poem is very characteristic of the noble ease with which Schiller often loves to surprise the reader, by the sudden introduction of matter for the loftiest reflection, in the midst of the most familiar subjects. What can be more accurate and happy than the poet's description of the national dance, as if such description

were his only object-the outpouring, as it were, of a young gal lant, intoxicated with the music, and dizzy with the waltz? Sud denly and imperceptibly the reader finds himself elevated from a trivial scene. He is borne upward to the harmony of the spheres, and listens to the law of the universe.

THE NADOWESSIAN DEATH-DIRGE.

THE idea of this Poem is taken from Carver's Travels through North America. Goethe reckoned it amongst Schiller's best poems of the kind, and wished he had made a dozen such. But, precisely because Goethe admired it for its objectivity, William Von Humboldt found it wanting in ideality.

NEE there he sits, upon his mat,

SEE

There still he sits upright;

The same as when he living sat,

And looked upon the light.

But where the right hand's strength? and where

The breath that once did breathe,

To the Great Spirit aloft in air,

The pipe's pale vapor-wreath ?

And where the eyes so falcon clear,
On waves of grass to view

The faintest track that wandering deer
Had left on blade or dew?

Are these the feet that could not flag,
But bounded through the snow,
As when, full-antlered, flies the stag,
Or the light mountain roe?

Are these the arms that proudly bore,
And stoutly bent, the bow?