Poems, first period

The Project Gutenberg EBook Poems of The First Period, by Schiller
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Title: Poems of The First Period
Author: Frederich Schiller
Release Date: Oct, 2004 [EBook #6794]
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[This file was first posted on January 31,
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Edition: 10
Language: English
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0. START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POEMS FIRST
PERIOD, SCHILLER ***

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POEMS OF THE FIRST PERIOD
By Frederich Schiller
CONTENTS:
Hector and Andromache
Amalia
A Funeral Fantasie
Fantasie--To
Laura
To Laura at the Harpsichord
Group from Tartarus

Rapture--To Laura
To Laura (The Mystery of Reminiscence)

Melancholy--To Laura
The Infanticide
The Greatness of the World

Fortune and Wisdom
Elegy on the Death of a Young Man
The
Battle
Rousseau
Friendship
Elysium
The Fugitive
To Minna

The Flowers
The Triumph of Love (A Hymn)
To a Moralist

Count Eberhard, the Groaner of Wurtemburg
To the Spring
Semele
HECTOR AND ANDROMACHE.
[This and the following poem are, with some alterations, introduced in
the Play of "The Robbers."]
ANDROMACHE.
Will Hector leave me for the fatal plain,
Where,
fierce with vengeance for Patroclus slain,
Stalks Peleus' ruthless son?
Who, when thou glid'st amid the dark
abodes,
To hurl the spear and to revere the gods,
Shall teach thine orphan one?
HECTOR.
Woman and wife beloved--cease thy tears;
My soul is
nerved--the war-clang in my ears!
Be mine in life to stand
Troy's bulwark!--fighting for our hearths, to
go
In death, exulting to the streams below,

Slain for my fatherland!
ANDROMACHE.
No more I hear thy martial footsteps fall--

Thine arms shall hang, dull trophies, on the wall--
Fallen the stem of Troy!
Thou goest where slow Cocytus
wanders--where
Love sinks in Lethe, and the sunless air
Is dark to light and joy!
HECTOR.
Longing and thought--yes, all I feel and think
May in
the silent sloth of Lethe sink,
But my love not!
Hark, the wild swarm is at the walls!--I hear!
Gird
on my sword--Beloved one, dry the tear--
Lethe for love is not!
AMALIA.
Angel-fair, Walhalla's charms displaying,
Fairer than all mortal
youths was he;
Mild his look, as May-day sunbeams straying

Gently o'er the blue and glassy sea.
And his kisses!--what ecstatic feeling!
Like two flames that lovingly
entwine,
Like the harp's soft tones together stealing
Into one sweet
harmony divine,--
Soul and soul embraced, commingled, blended,
Lips and cheeks with
trembling passion burned,
Heaven and earth, in pristine chaos ended,

Round the blissful lovers madly turn'd.
He is gone--and, ah! with bitter anguish
Vainly now I breathe my
mournful sighs;
He is gone--in hopeless grief I languish
Earthly
joys I ne'er again can prize!
A FUNERAL FANTASIE.

Pale, at its ghastly noon,
Pauses above the death-still wood--the moon;

The night-sprite, sighing, through the dim air stirs;
The clouds
descend in rain;
Mourning, the wan stars wane,
Flickering like
dying lamps in sepulchres!
Haggard as spectres--vision-like and
dumb,
Dark with the pomp of death, and moving slow,
Towards
that sad lair the pale procession come
Where the grave closes on the
night below.
With dim, deep-sunken eye,
Crutched on his staff, who trembles
tottering by?
As wrung from out the shattered heart, one groan

Breaks the deep hush alone!
Crushed by the iron fate, he seems to
gather
All life's last strength to stagger to the bier,
And hearken--Do
these cold lips murmur "Father?"
The sharp rain, drizzling through
that place of fear, Pierces the bones gnawed fleshless by despair,
And
the heart's horror stirs the silver hair.
Fresh bleed the fiery wounds
Through all that agonizing heart
undone--
Still on the voiceless lips "my Father" sounds,
And still
the childless Father murmurs "Son!"
Ice-cold--ice-cold, in that white
shroud he lies--
Thy sweet and golden dreams all vanished there--

The sweet and golden name of "Father" dies
Into thy
curse,--ice-cold--ice-cold--he lies!
Dead, what thy life's delight and
Eden were!
Mild, as when, fresh from the arms of Aurora,
While the air like
Elysium is smiling above,
Steeped in rose-breathing odors, the
darling of Flora
Wantons over the blooms on his winglets of love.

So gay, o'er the meads, went his footsteps in bliss,
The silver wave
mirrored the smile of his face;
Delight, like a flame, kindled up at his
kiss,
And the heart of the maid was the prey of his chase.
Boldly he sprang to the strife of the world,
As a deer to the
mountain-top carelessly springs;
As an eagle whose plumes