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DER FREISCHUTZ
Es gibt im Menschenleben Augenblicke, Wo er dem Weltgeist näher ist als sonst.—Schiller.HE? why, a tall Franconian strong and young,Brown as a walnut the first frost hath hulled;A soul of full endeavor powerfulBound in lithe limbs, knit into grace and strengthOf bronze-like muscles elegant, that poisedA head like Hope's; and then the manly linesOf face developed by action and mobileTo each suggestive impulse of the mind,Of smiles of buoyancy or scowls of gloom. —And what deep eyes were his! – Aye; I can seeTheir wild and restless disks of luminous nightInstinct with haughtiness that sneered at Fate,Glared cold conclusion to all circumstance,As with loud law, to his advantage swift:With scorn derisive that shot out a barb,Stabbed Superstition to its dagger hilt;That smiled a thrust-like smile which curled the lip,A vicious heresy with incredible lore,When God's or holy Mary's name came forthExclaimed in reverence or astonishment;And then would say,"What is this God you mouth,Employ whose name to sanctify and damn? —A benedictive curse? – 'T hath past my skillOf grave interpretation. And your faith —Distinguishment unseen, design unlawed.For earth, air, fire or water or keen cold,Hints no existence of such, worships not,Such as men's minds profess. Rather, meseems,Throned have they one such as their hopes have wroughtIn hope there may prove such an one in deathFor Paradise or punishment. I holdHe juster were and would be kinglier kindIn sovereign mercy and a prodigal —Not to few favored heads who, crowned with state,Rule sceptered Infamies – of indulgence freeTo all that burn luxuriant incense onShrines while they prayer him love's obedience.Are all not children of the same weak mold?Clay of His Adam-modeled clay made quick?Endowed with the like hopes, loves, fears and hates,Our mother's weaknesses? And these, forsooth,These little crowns that lord it o'er His world,Tricked up with imitative majesty,God-countenanced arrogances, throned may stillCry, 'crawl and worship, for we are as godsThrough God! great gods incarnate of his kind!'– Omnipotent Wrong-representatives!With might that blasts the world with wars and wringsGroans from pale Nations with hell's tyranny.So to my mind real monarch only he —Your Satan cramped in Hell! – aye, by the fiend!To pygmy Earth's frail tinsel majesties,That ape a God in a sonorous Heaven.Grant me the Devil in all mercy then,For I will none of such! a fiend for friendWhile Earth is of the earth; and afterward —Nay! ransack not To-morrow till To-day,If all that's joy engulf you when it is."And laughed an oily laugh of easy jestTo bow out God and hand the Devil in. —I met him here at Ammendorf one Spring,Toward the close of April when the Harz,Veined to their ruin-crested summits, pulsedA fluid life of green and budded goldBeneath pure breathing skies of boundless blue:Where low-yoked oxen, yellow to the knees,Along the fluted meadow, freshly ploughed,Plodded and snuffed the fragrance of the soil,The free bird sang exultant in the sun.Triumphant Spring with hinted hopes of MayAnd jaunty June, her mouth a puckered rose.Here at this very hostelery o' The Owl;Mine host there sleek served cannikins of wineBeneath that elm now touseled by that shrew,Lean Winter. Well! – a lordly vintage that!With tang of fires which had sucked out their soulFrom feverish sun-vats, cooled it from the moon's;From wine-skin bellies of the bursting grapeTrodden, in darkness of old cellars agedEven to the tingling smack of olden earth.Rich! I remember! – wine that spurred the blood —Thou hast none such, I swear, nor wilt again! —That brought the heart loud to the generous mouth,And made the eyes unlatticed casements whenceThe good man's soul laughed interested out.Stoups of rare royal Rhenish, such they sayAs Necromance hides guarded in vast casksOf antique make far in the Kyffhäuser,The Cellar of the Knights near Sittendorf.So, mellowed by that wine to friendship frank,He spake me his intent in coming here;But not one word of what his parentage;But this his name was, Rudolf, and his home,Franconia; but nor why he left nor when:His mind to live a forester and beEnfellowed in the Duke of Brunswick's trainOf buff and green; and so to his estateEven now was bound, a youth of twenty-three.And when he ceased the fire in his eyesWorked restless as a troubled animal's,Which hate-enraged can burn a steady flame,Brute merciless. And thus I mused with me,When he had ceased to fulminate at state,"Another Count von Hackelnburg the fiendHath tricked unto the chase! – for hounds from Hell?"But answered nothing, save light words of cheerAs best become fleet friends warm wine doth make.Then as it chanced, old Kurt had come that mornWith some six of his jerkined forestersFrom the Thuringian forest; damp with dew;Red-cheeked as morn with early travel; boundFor Brunswick, Dummburg and the Hakel passed.Chief huntsman he then to the goodly Duke,And father of the sunniest maiden hereIn Ammendorf, the blameless Ilsabe;Who, motherless, the white-haired father prizedA jewel priceless. As huge barons' ghostsGuard big, accumulated hoards of wealth,Fast-sealed in caverned cellars, robber wells,Beneath the dungeoned Dummburg, so he watchedHer, all his world in her who was his wealth.A second Lora of Thuringia she.Faultless for love, instilled all souls with love,Who, in the favor of her maiden smile,Felt friendship grow up like a golden thought;A life of love from words; and light that fellAnd wrought calm influence from her pure blue eyes.Hair sedate and austerely dressed o'er browsWhite as a Harz dove's wing; hair with the hueOf twilight mists the sun hath soaked with gold.A Tyrolean melody that broughtDim dreams of Alpine heights, of shepherds brown,Goat-skinned, with healthy cheeks and wrinkled lipsThat fill wild oaten pipes on wand'ring ways,Embowered deep, with mountain melodies, —Simple with love and plaintive even to tears, —Her presence, her sweet presence like a song.And when she left, it was as when one hathBeheld a moonlit Undine, ere the mindAdjusts one thought, cleave thro' the glassy RhineA glittering beauty wet, and gone againA flash – the soul drifts wondering on in dreams.Some thirty years agone is that; and I,Commissioner of the Duke – no sinecureI can assure you – had scarce reached the ageOf thirty (then some three years of that House).Thro' me the bold Franconian, whom at first,By bitter principles and scorn of state —Developed into argument thro' wine —The foresthood like was to be denied,Was then enfellowed. "Yes," I said, "he's young;True, rashly young! yet, see: a wiry frame,A chamois' footing, and a face for right;An eye which likes me not, but quick with pride,And aimed at thought, a butt it may not miss:A soul with virgin virtues which crude fleshMakes seem but vices, these but God may see —Develop these. But, if there's aught of worth,Body or mind, in him, Kurt, thou wilt know,And to the surface wear, as divers winFrom hideous ooze and life rich jewels lostOf polished pureness, worthless left to night,Thou or thy daughter, and inspire for good."A year thereafter was it that I heardOf Rudolf's passion for Kurt's Ilsabe,Then their betrothal. And it was from this, —For, ah, that Ilsabe! that Ilsabe! —Good Mary Mother! how she haunts me yet!She, that true touchstone which philosophers feignContacts and golds all base; a woman whoCould touch all evil into good in man. —Surmised I of the excellency whichRefinement of her gentle company,Warm presence of chaste beauty, had resolvedHis fiery nature to, conditioning slave.And so I came from Brunswick – as you know —Is custom of the Duke or, by his sealCommissioned proxy, his commissioner, —To test the marksmanship of Rudolf whoSucceeded Kurt with marriage of his child,An heir of Kuno. – He? – Great grandfatherOf Kurt, and one this forestkeepershipWas first possesor of; established thus —Or such the tale they told me 'round the hearths.Kuno, once in the Knight of Wippach's train,Rode on a grand hunt with the Duke, who cameWith vast magnificence of knights and hounds,And satin-tuniced nobles curled and plumedTo hunt Thuringian deer. Then Morn too slowOn her blithe feet was; quick with laughing eyesTo morrow mortal eyes and lazy limbs;Rather on tip-toed hills recumbent yawned,Aroused an hour too soon; ashamed, disrobed,Rubbed the stiff sleep from eyes that still would close,While brayed the hollow horns and bayed lean hounds,And cheered gallants until the dingles dinned,Where searched the climbing mists or, compact light,Fled breathless white, clung scared a moted gray,Low unsunned cloudlands of the castled hills.And then near mid-noon from a swarthy brakeThe ban-dogs roused a red gigantic stag,Lashed to whose back with grinding knotted cords,Borne with whom like a nightmare's incubus,A man shrieked; burry-bearded and his hairKinked with dry, tangled burrs, and he himselfEmaciated and half naked. FromThe wear of wildest passage thro' the wild,Rent red by briars, torn and bruised by rocks.– For, such the law then, when the peasant chasedOr slew the dun deer of his tyrant lords,As punishment the torturing withes and spineOf some big stag, a gift of game and wildEnough till death – death in the antlered herdOr crawling famine in bleak, haggard haunts.Then was the dark Duke glad, and forthwith criedTo all his dewy train a rich rewardFor him who slew the stag and saved the man,But death to him who slew the man and stag,The careless error of a loose attempt.So crashed the hunt along wild, glimmering waysThro' creepers and vast brush beneath gnarled trees,Up a scorched torrent's bed. Yet still refusedEach that sure shot; the risk too desperateThe poor life and the golden gift beside.So this young Kuno with two eyes whereinHunt with excitement kindled reckless fireClamored, "And are ye cowards? – Good your grace,You shall not chafe! – The fiend direct my ball!"And fired into a covert deeply packed,An intertangled wall of matted night,Wherein the eye might vainly strive and striveTo pierce one foot or earn one point beyond.But, ha! the huge stag staggered from the brakeHeart-hit and perished. That wan wretch unhurtSoon bondless lay condoled. But the great Duke,Charmed with the eagle shot, admired the youth,There to him and his heirs forever gaveThe forest keepership.But envious tonguesWere soon at wag; and whispered went the taleOf how the shot was free, and that the ballsUsed by young Kuno were free bullets, whichMolded were cast in influence of the fiendBy magic and directed by the fiend.Of some effect these tales were and some forceHad with the Duke, who lent an ear so farAs to ordain Kuno's descendants allTo proof of skill ere their succession toThe father's office. Kurt himself hath shotThe silver ring from out the popinjay's beak —A good shot he, you see, who would succeed.The Devil guards his mysteries close as God.For who can say what elementariesDemoniac lurk in desolate dells and woodsShadowy? malicious vassals of that powerWho signs himself, thro' these, a slave to those,Those mortals who act open with his Hell,Those only who seek secretly and woo.Of these free, fatal bullets let me speak:There may be such; our Earth hath things as strange;Then only in coarse fancies may exist;For fancy is among our peasantryA limber juggler with the weird and dark;For Superstition hides not her grim face,A skeleton grin on leprous ghastliness,From Ignorance's mossy thatches low.A cross-way, as I heard, among gaunt hills,A solitude convulsed of rocks and treesBlasted; and on the stony cross-road drawnA bloody circle with a bloody sword;Herein rude characters; a skull and thighsFantastic fixed before a fitful fireOf spiteful coals. Eleven of the clockCast, the first bullet leaves the mold, – the leadMixed with three bullets that have hit their mark,Burnt blood, – the wounded Sacramental Host,Unswallowed and unhallowed, oozed when shotFixed to a riven pine. – Ere twelve o'clock,When dwindling specters in their rotting shroudsQuit musty tombs to mumble hollow woesIn Midnight's horrored ear, with never a cry,Word or weak whisper, till that hour sound,Must the free balls be cast; and these shall beIn number three and sixty; three of whichSemial – he the Devil's minister —Claims for his master and stamps as his ownTo hit awry their mark, askew for harm.Those other sixty shall not miss their mark.No cry, no word, no whisper, tho' there gibeMost monstrous shapes that flicker in thick mistLewd human countenances or leer outSwoln animal faces with fair forms of men,While wide-winged owls fan the drear, dying coals,That lick thin, slender tongues of purple fireFrom viperous red, and croaks the night-hawk near.No cry, no word, no whisper should there comeWeeping a wandering form with weary, whiteAnd pleading countenance of her you love,Faded with tears of waiting; beckoningWith gray, large arms or censuring; her shameIn dull and desolate eyes; who, if you speakOr stagger from that circle – hideous change! —Shrinks, faced a hag of million wrinkles, whichRidge scaly sharpness of protruding bones,To rip you limb from limb with taloned claws.Nor be deceived if some far midnight bellBoom that anticipated hour, nor leaveBy one short inch the bloody orbit, forThe minion varlets of Hell's majestyExpectant cirque its dim circumference.But when the hour of midnight smites, be sureYou have your bullets, neither more nor less;For, if thro' fear one more or less you have,Your soul is forfeit to those agencies,Right rathe who are to rend it from the flesh.And while that hour of midnight sounds a dinOf hurrying hoofs and shouting outriders —Six snorting steeds postilioned roll a stageBlack and with groaning wheels of spinning fire,"Room there! – ho! ho! – who bars the mountain-way!On over him!" – but fear not nor fare forth, —'Tis but the last trick of your bounden slave:And ere the red moon strives from dingy cloudsAnd dives again, high the huge leaders leapIron fore-hoofs flashing and big eyes like gledes,And, spun a spiral spark into the night,Whistling the phantom flies and fades away.Some say there comes no stage, but Hackelnburg,Wild Huntsman of the Harz, rides hoarse in storm,Dashing the dead leaves with dark dogs of hellDireful thro' whirling thickets, and his hornCroaks doleful as an owl's hoot while he hurlsStraight 'neath rain-streaming skies of echoes, sheerPlunging the magic circle horse and hounds.And then will come, plutonian clad and slim,Upon a stallion vast intensely black,Semial, Satan's lurid minister,To hail you and inform you and assure. —Enough! these wives-tales heard to what I've seen;To Ammendorf I came; and Rudolf thereWith Kurt and all his picturesque forestersMet me. And then the rounding year was ripe;Throbbing the red heart of full Autumn: WhenEach morning gleams crisp frost on shriveled fields;Each noon sits veiled in mysteries of mist;Each night unrolls a miracle woof of stars,Where moon – bare-bosomed goddess of the hunt —Wades calm, crushed clouds or treads the vaster blue.Then I proposed the season's hunt; till eveThe test of Rudolf's skill postponed, with whichAnnoyed he seemed. And so it was I heardHow he an execrable marksman was,And whispered tales of near, incredible shotsThat wryed their mark, while in his flint-lock's panFlashed often harmless powder, while wild gameStared fearless on him and indulgent stood,An open butt to such wide marksmanship.Howbeit, he that day acquitted himOf these maligners' cavils; in the huntMissing no shot however rash he madeOr distant thro' thick intercepting trees;And the piled, curious game brought down of allGood marksmen of that train had not sufficed,Doubled, nay, trebled, to have matched his heap.And wonderstruck the jägers saw, nor knewHow to excuse them. My indulgence giv'n,Still swore that only yesterday old KurtHad touched his daughter's tears and Rudolf's wrathBy vowing end to their betrothéd love,Unless that love developed better aimAgainst the morrow's test; his ancestor'sHigh fame should not be damaged. So he stormed,But bowed his gray head and wept silently;Then looking up forgave when big he sawTears in his daughter's eyes and Rudolf goneForth in the night that wailed with coming storm.Before this inn, The Owl, assembled cameThe nice-primped villagers to view the trial:Fair fräuleins and blonde, comely, healthy fraus;Stout burgers. And among them I did markKurt and his daughter. He, a florid faceOf pride and joy for Rudolf's strange success;She, radiant and flounced in flowing garbOf bridal white deep-draped and crowned with flowers;For Kurt insisted this their marriage eveShould Rudolf come successful from the chase.So pleased was I with what I'd seen him do,The test of skill superfluous seemed and soWas on the bare brink of announcement, when,Out of the evening heaven's hardening red,Like a white warning loosed for augury,A word of God some fallen angel prizedAs his last all of heaven, penitent,Hell-freed, sent minister to save a soul,A wild dove clove the luminous winds and there,A wafted waif, pruned settled on a bough:Then I, "Thy weapon, Rudolph, pierce its head!"Cried pointing, "And chief-forester art thou!"Pale as a mist and wavering he turned;"I had a dream – " then faltered as he aimed,"A woman's whim!" But starting from the pressScreamed Ilsabe, "My dove!" to plead its lifeCame – cracked the rifle and untouched the doveRose beating lustrous wings, but Ilsabe —"God's wrath! the sight!" – fell smitten, and the bloodSprang red from shattered brow and silent hair —That bullet strangely thro' her brow and brain…And what of Rudolf? ah! of him you ask?That proud Franconian who would scoff at FateAnd scorn all state; who cried black Satan friendSooner than our white Christ; – why, he went madO' the moment, and into the haunted HarzFled, an unholy thing, and perished thereThe prey of demons of the Dummburg. ButI one of few less superstitious whoSay, as the finale of a madman's deed,He in the Bodé, from that ragged rock,The Devil's Dancing Place, did leap and die.TO REVERY
WHAT ogive gates from gold of Ophir wrought,What walls of bastioned Parian, lucid rose,What marts of crystal, for the eyes of ThoughtHast builded on what Islands of Repose!Vague onyx columns ranked Corinthian,Or piled Ionic, colonnading heightsThat loom above long burst of mythic seas:Vast gynaeceums of carnelian;Micaceous temples, far marmorean flights,Where winds the arabesque and plastique frieze.Where bulbous domes of coruscating oreCloud – like convulsive sunsets – lands that dream,Myrrh-fragrant, over siren seas and hoar,Dashed with stiff, breezy foam of ocean's stream.Tempestuous architecture-revelries;Built melodies of marble or clear glass;Effulgent sculptures chiseled out of thoughtIn misty attitudes, whose majestiesFeed full the pleasure as those beauties passTo pale extinctions which are beauty fraught.On rebeck and on rose in plinths of spars,On glimmering solitudes of flower and stone,A twilight-glow swoons settled, burned with stars,Deep violet dusk developing nor done.Where float fair nacreous shapes like deities, —Existences of glory musical, —'Round whose warm hair twist fillets' coiling gold,Their limbs Olympian lovely, and their eyesDark oblique fervors; and most languorous tallIn woven white with girdling gold threefold.There darkling the consummate vintage sleeps, —Lethe-nepenthes for Earth-agony, —In sealéd amphorae some Sybil keeps,World-old, forever cellared secretly.A wine of Xeres or of Syracuse?A fierce Falernian? – Ah! no vile Sabine! —A stol'n ambrosia of what olden god?Whose bubbled rubies maiden feet did bruiseFrom crusted vats of vintage rich, I ween,Vivacious purple of some Samian sod.Oh, for the cold conclusion of one draught!Elysian ecstacy of classic earth! —Where heroes warred with gods and where gods laughedIn eyes of mortal brown, a lusty mirthOf deity delirious with desire:Where danced the sacrifice to hornéd shrines,And splashed the full libation blue as blood. —Oh, to be drunk with dreaming! to inspireThe very soul of beauty whence it shinesToo lost for utterance yet understood!In cogitation of what verdurous shades,Dull-droning quietudes where wild-bees lolledSuck, lulled in pulpy lilies of the glades,Barbaric-smothered with the kerneled gold:Teased by some torso of the golden age,Nude breasts of Cytherea, famous fair,Uncestus'd, yet suggestive of what lovesImmortal! yearn enamoured; or to rageWith sun-burnt Poesy whose throat breathes bareO'er leopard skins and flute among her groves.LATE OCTOBER
AH, haughty hills, sardonic solitudes,What wizard touch hath, crowning you with gold,Cast Tyrian purple o'er broad-shouldered woods,And to your pride anointed empire soldFor wan traditioned death, whose misty moodsShake each huge throne of quarried shadows cold?Now where the agate-foliaged forests sleep,Bleak briars are ruby-berried, and the brushFlames – when the winds armsful of motion heapIn wincing gusts upon it – amber blush;The beech an inner beryle breaks from deepEncrusting topaz of a sullen flush.Dead gold, dead bronze, dull amethystine rose,Rose cameo, in day's gray, somber sparOf smoky quartz – intaglioed beauty – glowsLuxuriance of color. Trunks that areVast organs antheming the winds' wild woesA faded sun and pale night's paler star.Bulged from its cup the dark-brown acorn falls,And by its gnarly saucer in the streamsSwells plumped; and here the spikey spruce-gum ballsRust maces of an ouphen host that dreams;Beneath the chestnut the split burry hullsDisgorge fat purses of sleek satin gleams.Burst silver white, nods an exploded huskOf snowy, woolly smoke the milk-weed's puffAlong the orchard's fence, where in the duskAnd ashen weeds, – as some grim Satyr's roughRed, breezy cheeks burn thro' his beard, – the brusqueCrab apples laugh, wind-tumbled from above.Runs thro' the wasted leaves the crickets' click,Which saddest coignes of Melancholy cheers;One bird unto the sumach flits to pickRed, sour seeds; and thro' the woods one hearsThe drop of gummy walnuts; the railed rickLooms tawny in the field where low the steers.Some slim bud-bound Leimoniad hath flocked,The birds to Echo's shores, where flossy foamsBoom low long cream-white cliffs. – Where once buzzedUnmillioned bees within unmillioned blooms,One hairy hummer cramps one bloom, frost mocked, – rockedA miser whose rich hives squeeze oozing combs.Twist some lithe maple and right suddenlyA leafy storm of stars about you breaks —Some Hamadryad's tears: Unto her kneeWading the Naiad clears her brook that streaksThro' wadded waifs: Hark! Pan for HelikeFlutes melancholy by the minty creeks.AN ANEMONE
TEACH me the wisdom of thy beauty, pray,That, being thus wise, I may aspire to seeWhat beauty is, whence, why, and in what wayImmortal, yet how mortal utterly:For, shrinking loveliness, thy brow of dayPleads plaintive as a prayer, anemone."Teach me wood-wisdom, I am petulant:Thou hast the wildness of a Dryad's eyes,The shyness of an Oread's, wild plant: —Behold the bashful goddess where she liesDistinctly delicate! – inhabitantAmbrosial-earthed, star-cousin of the skies."Teach me thy wisdom, for, thro' knowing, yet,When I have drunk dull Lethe till each veinThuds full oblivion, I shall not forget; —For beauty known is beauty; to sustainGlad memories with life, while mad regretAnd sorrow perish, being Lethe slain.""Teach thee my beauty being beautifulAnd beauty wise? – My slight perfections, wholeAs world, as man, in their creation fullAs old a Power's cogitation roll.Teach thee? – Presumption! thought is young and dull —Question thy God what God is, soul what soul."THE RAIN-CROW
THEE freckled August, dozing hot and blondeOft 'neath a wheat-stack in the white-topped mead —In her full hair brown ox-eyed daisies wound —O water-gurgler, lends a sleepy heed:Half-lidded eyes a purple iron-weedBlows slimly o'er; beyond, a path-found pondBasks flint-bright, hedged with pink-plumed pepper-grasses,A coigne for vainest dragonflies, which glassesTheir blue in diamond.Oft from some dusty locust, that thick weavesWith crescent pulse-pods its thin foliage gray,Thou, – o'er the shambling lane, which past the sheavesOf sun-tanned oats winds, red with rutty clay,One league of rude rail-fence, – some panting day,When each parched meadow quivering vapor grieves,Nature's Astrologist, dost promise rain,In seeping language of the thirsty plain,Cool from the burning leaves.And, in good faith, aye! best of faith, art true;And welcome that rune-chuckled forecasting,When up the faded fierceness of scorched blueStrong water-carrier winds big buckets bring,Black with stored freshness: how their dippers ringAnd flash and rattle! lavishing large dewOn tall, good-humored corn that, streaming wet,Laughs long; while woods and leas, shut in a netOf mist, dream vague in view.And thou, safe-houséd in some pawpaw bowerOf close, broad, gold-green leaves, contented artIn thy prediction, fall'n within the hour;While fuss the brown bees hiveward from the heartOf honey-filtering bloom; beneath the cartDroop pompous barnyard cocks damped by the shower:And deep-eyed August, bonnetless, a beechHugs in disheveled beauty, safe from reachOn starry moss and flower.