Wet every thread, and every pore o'erflows.

The breath half-stopped scarce heaves with struggling pain;
The drowsy blood slow creeps through every vein;

Involuntary joy, like torture, thrills:

The king, as from a bath, in streams distills,

And pants upon his couch, amid the exhausted train.

Stiff, without motion, scarce with sense endued,
Down, one by one, the o'erwearied dancers fall,
Where swelling bolsters heave around the wall:
Emirs and lowly slaves, in contrast rude,
Mix with the harem goddesses, as chance
Tangles the mazes of the frantic dance:

At once together by a whirlwind blown,
On the same bed, in ill-paired union thrown,

The groom and favorite lie confused in breathless trance.

J. H. VOSS.

GERMANY is indebted to Johann Heinrich Voss (1751-1826) for faithful translations of Homer and other ancient classics, and of Shakespeare. Born at Sommersdorf in Mecklenburg, he was educated at Göttingen, and there became a leader of the Hainbund, a group of poets who sought to maintain Klopstock's nationalism in opposition to Wieland's Gallic tendencies. Voss edited the Musenalmanach, and published many original poems, the most noted being the idyll "Luise," in which he applied the classical metres and style to the expression of modern sentiment. For a long time it was popular, even after it was surpassed in its own field by Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea." Voss became a village pastor, but still prosecuted his classical studies. His translations prove his sound scholarship, and his use of the hexameter and other ancient metres has given them a permanent place in German poetry. Voss was made a professor at Heidelberg in 1805, and held this place till his death in 1826.

LUISE'S EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY.

(From "Luise," Idyll I.)

UNDER the sweet, cool shade of two umbrageous lime-trees, Which, with their gold bloom gay, with the bees' song drowsily ringing,

Shading the parlor front, o'er the mossed roof whispered waving, Cheerfully held his feast the worthy Pastor of Grunau,

For his Louisa's sake, domestic, yet grand in his home-gown. Round the table of stone stood three cane chairs, which the houseboy

Carved in his private hours, as a gift for the maid on her birthday,
Fit for guests; for the master an arm-chair grander in structure.
After his meal sat the old man there at his ease, and delighted
With his instructive speech and his tales himself and his hearers.
At the well-known tale soft smiling, gently the mother
Plucked in secret the sleeve, close by, of the listening daughter,
And, near leaning her head, thus spoke in whispering accents:
"Say, shall we go to the wood, my child? or wouldest thou rather,
Since that the sun is so hot, by the brook, in the arbor of woodbine,
We should thy birthday keep? How shy thou lookest and
blushest!"

Started with sweet surprise, rose-blooming, and answered the maiden,

"Not in the arbor, my mother; the woodbine's scent in the eve is All too strong; where the lilies shed, and where the reseda Odors too; and the flies swarm, teasing, over the water. Beautiful looks the sun, and the wooded bank has its coolness." Nodded the mother assent. And now the story was ended, And to her husband quick turn'd then the intelligent housewife. "Wilt thou now say grace? Louisa had rather her birthday Kept in the wood, than below at the brook in the arbor of woodbine:

Beautiful looks the sun, and the wooded bank has its coolness.
Now my advice. Let Master Walter and Charles the unwearied
Go with Louisa before, choose ground and gather us firewood.
Pity the gentlefolks are kept away at the castle,

Mother and daughter alike, by a stupid visitor. Sweeter
Were with Amelia the walk. Clear sound in the echoing forest
Songs that you sing. We old folks quietly over the water

Come by a shorter way. The steward, I know, for the birthday Gladly will lend us a boat. But yet it were well that your father Rest for a while. Noon sleep is good for elderly people, When the air is so hot and full of the scent of the bean-flower." Thereto answeredst thou, O honored Pastor of Grunau !— "There! only hear, son, the mistress! she orders it! Well, I must yield me

Quietly; every thing yield to the birthday feast of my Luise. Children! pray we to God the Eternal! Pray, and be reverent." So saying, bared he his head, the honored father, and show'd it Shining bald, ring'd round with locks of silvery whiteness; Humbly he sank his eyes, and with folded hands did his prayer make:

"Hear, O God, our Father! that fillest with food and with

gladness

All that has life, the thanks thy children stammer before thee.
We are but dust. Do thou us guard, in this life of temptation,
Both from evil and woe, and from pride and vanity's swelling.
Give to us daily bread of our own, till, guided by thee still,
These vain cares are past, and we enter into thy glory.
Children! to you may this meal be blest, and be blessings for
ever."

Thus the old man spake, and they all came near him and kissed him.

Grateful, kissed and embraced her father his roseate daughter; Then, to his cheek close pressing, caress'd him. And with emotion

He to his heart press'd her, and rock'd his child on his bosom.

Now to the steward hied, full charged with his errand, the house-boy,

That he would lend to his friends, for the birth-day feast of the maiden,

Kindly the boat; that solidly built, on the strand of the Ostsee, Steer'd out e'en when the waves rose high, for rowing or angling. Out spoke Hans his commission, and quick did the steward reply make:

"Ask for the boat, or for aught that I can. The maiden is welcome."

Spoke and the key to the hasty messenger gave. But the maiden Took, for Charles much urged, the arm of the well-manner'd

Walter,

So by the dashing wheel of the mill, and down to the meadow,

Pleased they winded along. To the well-turn'd feet of the maiden Clung her garment of white, all gay with rose-color'd ribands: Silken gauze betray'd, while it wrapt, her bosom and shoulders, Decked in front with the bud of a rose, and skillfully plaited. Shaded her fair frank face her straw hat cover'd with corn-flowers; And, by her breath moved, flow'd in the wind her dark-colored ringlets,

Glossy, shining in light, and carefully bound with a riband. White show'd forth from the brown glove's verge the hand of the

damsel,

Plump and tender, oft cooling her face with the breeze that her

fan made;

And as the left in the arm of the youth lay gently, he felt there Play in his hand all warm the damsel's delicate fingers,

And to his heart ran a thrill of delight. Hard breathing and speechless

Press'd he the tiny hand, and folded with fingers that trembled. And thus loiter'd the pair through grass and blossoming fieldflow'rs

Slowly; the grasshoppers chirped all around; and then, as bewilder'd,

Thoughtful and shy, shunn'd meeting of looks, and little they

utter'd.

As they now, sighing oft, stept down to the dell and its thicket, Where, by the stile, all swampy and red, the source from the sandbank

Sluggishly crept, 'mid clumps rush-cover'd, and patches of mare'stail,

Timidly, then, by the hand of the youth assisted, the damsel Stept from each to the next of the stones, for travelers placed

there,

And for the neighbors who took the shortest path to the churchyard ;

Timid, in fear the morass might soil the skirts of her garment, Shrinking away from the startling frog with maidenly terror. And now she stood by the stile, and her small foot carefully lifted Over the bar, that still would reveal the clock of the stocking; Quickly she order'd her robes, and over she sprang like a roe-deer. Then through the hazel-bush, on the path scooped out by the rainstream,

Up the precipitous bank, and obliquely round by the hawthorn; And arriv'd at the top, thus spake, rose-cheeked, the damsel :

"Stay for a moment here. My heart so beats! How refreshing Over the lake the cool gales sweep! and see how the prospect Laughs around! Down there, alternate, darker and lighter Corn-fields stretch and wave, all checker'd with blossoming fieldflow'rs.

There, amid orchard wealth, the village so friendly shelter'd,
By the meandering brook, and the tow'er with its glittering wind-

vane.

White amid chestnuts the castle above; and red in the meadow Lowing herds! and the stork, how familiar! stalking among them. Then the quivering blue of the lake, as it sweeps round the headland:

Haymakers there, and there are mowers. Sit we on the bank here 'Mid the hum of the laboring bees, and the odor of bean-fields."

THE STORMSTERS.

By this name George Henry Lewes has designated the champions of the "Sturm und Drang" (Storm and Stress) period of German literature. They represent the great German revolution of the eighteenth century, which was fought out in the realm of letters, instead of on the battle-field. It is plain that the works of Maximilian Klinger (17521831), Reinhold Lenz, Heinrich Leopold Wagner, William Heinse and Christian Daniel Schubart (1739-1791) teem with bitter invective against the nobility and against the risen militarism, and the sentiment finds its fiercest expression in such lyrics as Fritz von Stolberg's famous "Ode to Liberty (1775), and Schubart's "Fürstengruft"-"Sepulchre of Princes”—(1781), which gives all princes to the worms. And yet individualism, rather than mere political independence, was the stormy demand of this school. Thus, the hero of Klinger's "Sturm und Drang" (1776)—the drama which gave the name to the entire group-comes to America to fight in the existing War for Independence, not for the sake of liberty, but of individualism. Listen to him: "I had to run away to get out of this fearful restlessness and uncertainty. Have been everything. Became a day-laborer to be something. Lived on the Alps, pastured goats, lay day and night under the boundless vault of the heavens, cooled by the winds,