IN THE MAY TERM. "Ueber allen Gipfeln In allen Wipfeln Kaum einen Hauch; Die Vögelein schweigen in Walde: Warte nur, balde Ruhest du auch."-Goethe. I. Evening. IN the happiest of his early days, Goethe wrote the poem "Ueber allen Gipfeln ist Ruh," on the wall of a hunting lodge, or forest-hut, at Ilmenau. Shortly before he died he revisited the scene, and read the memorial lines. Regrets came to him, and tender remembrance of the time when that simple little verse was written, an impromptu of the moment: he thought of changes that years had brought since then Mrs. Austin says these beautiful lines by Goethe have all "the calm and harmony of a summer night;" and adds, “their sweetness is perhaps unattainable" by translation. Her version has little either of the music or of the solemn impressiveness of the original. Almost all who have attempted to transfer into our language "Ueber allen Gipfeln" have been defeated by the airy witchery of the Poem. Longfellow's translation in "Hyperion," is sweet, but not faithful to the enchanting irregularity of rhythm. It is pretty and soothing, however : "Under the tree-tops is quiet now! VOL. III. The little birds are asleep in the trees; how Wieland and Herder, Schiller and Karl August, his dearest friends, had died and left him, a lonely-hearted old man, the patriarch of German literature, to drop into his grave and sleep at peace. His eyes filled with tears, we are told, as he repeated the lines. "Yes," he murmured softly to himself, "Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch !—Thou, too, soon shalt rest!" The words of that "old man eloquent" return often to memory, as we pace the quiet groves of St. John's, or sit at twilight musing happily, though somewhat sadly, at our life, study window. Happily, for we dearly love this College its holiness and seclusion, precious to those who desire the calm and peaceful regularity of labour; its healthy activity, sociality, and buoyancy of heart, such as the "Lady Margaret" men enjoy: Sadly, moreover, for though not much of the world's misery shews itself here, where poverty, sickness, wrath, and injustice are not frequent visitors, and where the "Shadow feared of man" rarely crosses the threshold, there are many painful revelations even here: hours of weakness and of folly, in ourselves and others, as well as glimpses and echoes of the sterner warfare that is held outside, with deeper anguish and more hopeless entanglement of wrong-doing. Thence comes it that we may not be lulled into false security, or forget that the hour is drawing nigh when we must quit these honoured walls, and take whatever place awaits us among the crowd of workers, in town or country, striving to accomplish our little task with patience and fearless energy, before the head is laid beneath the sod. "Warte nur, balde ruhest du auch." Even the May-term, in its sacred hour of Twilight, forbids not such meditations as these. Theodore Martin gave a charming paraphrase, under the title of "Evening":-(Vide Aytoun and Martin's “Poems and Ballads by Goethe.") Whilst acknowledging that all must needs fail, we can only offer our own attempt, to share the blame of imperfection. Calm on all the hills now Rests around: Through each topmost bough Scarce a sound There doth creep: The Woodland birds have hushed their soft tune: Pause thou, then! soon Thou, too, shalt sleep. The thoughts of the evening-time do not greatly differ, whatever be the season, and whilst we grow older, roving on from land to land, wave by wave advancing, they repeat themselves, uttering the same warnings, shewing the same visionary faces, leading us upward and onward with the same spiritual blessing that they offered to us in our childhood, so long as we yield ourselves trustfully to their whisperings and are softened by the holy influence of that same hour, wherein, we read, the Lord Himself was wont to hold converse with our first parents, Walking in the garden in the cool of the day." 66 Can we ever exhaust the beauty of the evening time, which unites the loveliness of day and night? Where the sun sank from view, the long bars of cloud now stretch onward, line above line, yielding fanciful resemblance to the rocky ledges of a shore to the eternal sea of clear and glowing sky: the calm sweet heavens, that underlie all the disguises of the storm, the terrors of the thunder, and the slanting sun-gleams through the rain; all the dazzling glare of summer days, and the myriad sparkles of the winter stars at night: remaining inexhaustible in depth and mystery, richest where least adorned, most awful in the bare and beckoning beauty, to which our spirit yearns, yet cannot go, but which sometimes comes down to us and fills us with its wondrous fascination of repose. Is it life or death that breathes there, in the depths of heaven? can the soul doubt its immortality, even for an instant, with such a vision before it of the Silent Land, where nobler forms of life appear to wait for us? Assuredly the thought of Glück cannot be otherwise than true :— "There's peace and welcome in yon sea Of endless blue tranquillity: These clouds are living things; I trace their veins of liquid gold— I see them solemnly unfold Their soft and fleecy wings. These be the angels that convey Us weary children of a day, Life's tedious nothing o'er, Where neither passions come, nor woes, To vex the genius of repose On Death's majestic shore." Twilight ever has been, ever will remain, our favourite hour, and at such time it little matters where we be, on mountain-side or sea-shore, on the wild moorland or "in populous city pent," so that the evening sky be visible to us in solitude, if, indeed, that can be called a solitude which is full of all companionship in holy thoughts and feelings. It is because we believe the influence of the evening hour left some impress on the verse, that we now venture to offer to our fellow-students, before we part at the close of this "May-term," a. few lines which shaped themselves even as they are read below. Some years ago, we were resting for the night in an old Château, zur Philipsburg, one of the most spacious dwellings on the Rhine. Almost opposite lay a little village, unknown to fame, quietly rejoicing in the name of Niederspay. Our thoughts concerning it, went to this tune: NIEDERSPAY. (In the Rhine-Land.) In a château, quaint and spacious, that looks forth upon the Rhine, Thin blue smoke and rustic chapel feudal grandeur seem to mock; Folter-Kammer, den of torture, Hundloch grim and Donjon high, Bristling bayonet and cannon,-none of these suit Niederspay. Timber-rafts float past; it sees them :-hears the measured sweep of oars, Feels, but heedeth not, the swell of water lashing on its shores: Cares not for the flaunting steam-ship more than for the sluggish boat, Droning like a lazy school boy who has got his task by rote. same; If their cry were Reformation, Conquest, Freedom, Truth, or Fame: Zeitungs might propound grave terrors, timid matrons wail and sigh, Warriors burnish up old weapons; 'twould not waken Niederspay. |