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ing to a totally different poem, the Bride of Corinth, what can surpass the directness with which every word indicates the mysterious and terrible situation; every line is as a fresh page in the narrative, so rapidly and yet so gradually unfolded. A young man arrives at Corinth from Athens, to seek the bride whom his and her parents have destined for him. Since that agreement of the parents her family has turned Christian; and "when a new faith is adopted, love and truth are often uprooted like weeds." Ignorant of the change, he arrives. It is late in the night. The household are asleep; but a supper is brought to him in his chamber, and he is left alone. The weary youth has no appetite; he throws himself on his bed without undressing. As he falls into a doze the door opens, and by the light of his lamp he sees a strange guest enter a maiden veiled, clothed in white, about her brow a black and gold band. On seeing him, she raises a white hand in terror. She is about to fly, but he entreats her to stay-points to the banquet, and bids her sit beside him and taste the joys of the gods, Bacchus, Ceres, and Amor. But she tells him she belongs no more to joy; the gods have departed from that silent house where One alone in Heaven, and One upon the Cross, are adored; no sacrifices of Lamb or Ox are made, the sacrifice is that of a human life. This is a language the young pagan understands not. He claims her as his bride. She tells him she has been sent into a cloister. He will hear nothing. Midnight-the spectral hour-sounds; and she seems at her ease. She drinks the purple wine with her white lips, but refuses the bread he offers. She gives him a golden chain, and takes in return a lock of his air. She tells him she is cold as ice, but he believes that Love will warm her, even if she be sent from the grave:

"Wechselhauch und Kuss!
Liebesüberfluss!

Brennst du nicht und fühlest mich entbrannt?"

Love draws them together; eagerly she catches the fire from his lips, and each is conscious of existence only in the other;

but although the vampire bride is warmed by his love, no heart beats in her breast. It is impossible to describe the weird voluptuousness of this strange scene; this union of Life and Death; this altar of Hymen erected on the tomb. It is interrupted by the presence of the mother, who, hearing voices in the bridegroom's room, and the kiss of the lovers mingling with the cockcrow, angrily enters to upbraid her slave, whom she supposes to be with the bridegroom. She enters angry "and sees-God! she sees her own child!" The vampire rises like a Shadow, and reproaches her mother for having disturbed her. "Was it not enough that you sent me to an early grave?" she asks. But the grave could not contain her : the psalms of priests-the blessings of priests had no power over her; earth itself is unable to stifle Love. She has come'; she has sucked the blood from her bridegroom's heart; she has given him her chain and received the lock of his hair. To-morrow he will be grey; his youth he must seek once more in the tomb. She bids her mother prepare the funeral pyre, open her coffin, and burn the bodies of her bridegroom and herself, that they together may hasten to the gods.

In the whole of this wondrous ballad there is not a single image. Everything is told in the most direct and simple style. Everything stands before the eye like reality. The same may be said of the well-known Gott und die Bajadere, which is, as it were, the inverse of the Bride of Corinth. The Indian god passing along the banks of the Ganges is invited by the Bajadere to enter her hut, and repose himself. She coquettes with him, and lures him with the wiles of her caste. The god smiles and sees with joy, in the depths of her degradation, a pure human heart. He gains her love but, to put her to the severest proof, he makes her pass through

"Lust und Entsetzen und grimmige Pein."

;

She awakes in the morning to find him dead by her side. In an agony of tears she tries in vain to awaken him. The solemn, awful sounds of the priests chaunting the requiem break on her ear. She follows his corpse to the pyre, but the priests drive her away; she was not his wife; she has no

claim to die with him. But passion is triumphant; she springs into the flames, and the god rises from them with the rescued one in his arms.

The effect of the changing rhythm of this poem, changing from tender lightness to solemn seriousness, and the art with which the whole series of events is unfolded in successive pictures, are what no other German poet has ever attained. The same art is noticeable in the Erl King, known to every reader through Schubert's music, if through no other source. The father riding through the night, holding his son warm to his breast; the child's terror at the Erl King, whom the father does not see; and the bits of landscape which are introduced in so masterly a way, as explanations on the father's part of the appearances which frighten the child; thus mingling the natural and supernatural, as well as imagery with narrative: all these are cut with the distinctness of plastic art. The Erl King is usually supposed to have been original; but Viehoff, in his Commentary on Goethe's Poems, thinks that the poem Herder translated from the Danish Erlkönigs Tochter suggested the idea. The verse is the same. The opening line and the concluding line are nearly the same; but the story is different, and none of Goethe's art is to be found in the Danish ballad, which tells simply how Herr Oluf rides to his marriage, and is met on the way by the Erl King's daughter, who invites him to dance with her; he replies that he is unable to stop and dance, for to-morrow is his wedding-day. She offers him golden spurs and a silk shirt, but he still replies, "To-morrow is my wedding-day." She then offers him heaps of gold. 'Heaps of gold will I gladly take; but dance I dare not-will not." In anger she strikes him on the heart, and bids him ride to his bride. On reaching home, his mother is aghast at seeing him so pallid. He tells her he has been in the Erl King's country. “And what shall I say to your bride?" "Tell her I am in the wood with my horse and hound." The morning brings the guests, who ask after Herr Oluf. The bride lifts up the scarlet cloak; "there lay Herr Oluf, and he was dead." I have given this analysis of the Danish ballad for the reader to compare with the Erlkönig: a comparison

which will well illustrate the difference between a legend and a perfect poem.

It is not in the ballads alone, of which three have just been mentioned, that Goethe's superiority is seen. I might go through the two volumes of Lyrics, and write a commentary as long as this Biography, without exhausting so fertile a topic. Indeed his Biography is itself but a commentary on these poems, which are real expressions of what he has thought and felt:

"Spät erklingt, was früh erklang,
Glück und Unglück wird Gesang."

Even when, as in the ballads, or in poems such as the exquisite Idyl of Alexis and Dora, he is not giving utterance to any personal experience, he is scarcely ever feigning. Many of the smaller poems are treasures of wisdom; many are little else than the carollings of a bird "singing of summer in fullthroated ease". But one and all are inaccessible through translation; therefore I cannot attempt to give the English reader an idea of them; the German reader has already anticipated me, by studying them in the original.

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BOOK THE SEVENTH.

SUNSET.

1805-1832.

• Ως εύ ίσθι ότι εμοιγε όσον αί αλλαι αἱ κατα το σωμα ήδοναι απομαραι τοσούτον αυξονται αἱ περι τους λόγους επιθυμίαι τε και ήδοναι.

νονται,

PLATO, Rep. 1, 6.

"Le Temps l'a rendu spectateur."

MAD. DE STAEL.

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