Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Germany: Vols. XVII–XVIII. 1876–79. | | | | Miscellaneous | | Jeremiads | | Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) |
| | Translated by E. A. Bowring
ALL, both in prose and in verse, in Germany fast is decaying; | |
| Far behind us, alas, lieth the golden age now! | |
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| For by philosophers spoiled is our language,—our logic by poets, | |
| And no more common-sense governs our passage through life. | |
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| From the æsthetic, to which she belongs, now virtue is driven, | 5 |
| And into politics forced, where she ’s a troublesome guest. | |
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| Where are we hastening now? If natural, dull we are voted, | |
| And if we put on constraint, then the world calls us absurd. | |
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| O, thou joyous artlessness ’mongst the poor maidens of Leipzig, | |
| Witty simplicity, come,—come, then, to glad us again! | 10 |
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| Comedy, O, repeat thy weekly visits so precious, | |
| Sigismund, lover so sweet,—Mascarill, valet jocose! | |
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| Tragedy, full of salt, and pungency epigrammatic,— | |
| And thou, minuet,—step of our old buskin preserved! | |
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| Philosophic romance, thou manikin wailing with patience, | 15 |
| When, ’gainst the primer’s attack, Nature defendeth herself! | |
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| Ancient prose, O, return,—so nobly and boldly expressing | |
| All that thou think’st and hast thought,—and what the reader thinks too! | |
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| All, both in prose and in verse, in Germany fast is decaying; | |
| Far behind us, alas, lieth the golden age now! | 20 | | | |
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