She comes to walk in this sweet wild;
To-day I’ll banish all alarm;
Why should I tremble at a child
That does no living creature harm?
All give her greeting near and far;
I would, but dare not do the same;
And to my soul’s transcendent star
I cannot lift my eyes for shame.
The flowers that bend as she doth fare,
The birds with their voluptuous song,—
All these their love so well declare,
Why must I only feel it wrong?
To highest Heaven I oft prefer
Through livelong nights a bitter plaint;
Yet would I say three words to her,
“I love thee,” then my heart is faint.
In wait behind the tree I’ll stay
She passes in her daily walk,
And whisper “My sweet life” to-day,
As if in dreaming I did talk.
I will—but oh the fright I feel!
She comes, and she will see me sure;
So here into the bush I’ll steal,
And I shall see her pass secure.
For pathetic simplicity, perhaps none of his love-poems stands higher
than Die Mähderin—the ‘Female Mower.’ There is a pathos in the very fact
of the delicate girl—delicate at least in feeling—being engaged in rude
masculine toil, a case but too common in many countries; then, again, in
her hopeless attachment to the son of the rich farmer; then in her
overtasking her strength in mowing the whole field without refreshment
or repose, because the avaricious and selfish old man has promised her
his son’s hand as the price; and again, in the killing deception at the
close. She dies a martyr to the combined effects of the labour and the
disappointment, and the old man has virtually murdered her to prevent
her marrying his son and for selfish gain. Another example of a deep and
simple pathos, produced by two pictures of the same place, is ‘The
Castle on the Sea;’ it is a dioramic change of effect produced by a
dialogue. First the castle stands superb in rising or setting sunlight,
towering to heaven and bowing to the deep; the king and queen walk on
the terrace in their royal insignia, and a beautiful princess walks with
them: the scene changes to a weird moonlight effect, where the castle
stands in ghostly grandeur; the king and queen are there on the terrace,
but without their robes or crowns; they are in mourning, and the
princess is no longer with them. This ballad has been effectively
translated by Longfellow. Though verging on the impossible in subject,
‘The Mournful Tournament’ is a grand tragic sketch. Seven knights came
to joust for the favour of the king’s daughter, but as they came in
through the castle gate they heard the knell of her funeral. They
persist in the tournament; for the one who loves her most truly, holds
that still, though dead, she is worthy to be fought for, the victor
gaining her wreath and ring. All fall in the fight but he, and he is
mortally wounded, but, as the prize of victory, is buried with his
lady-love.
Similar in actual improbability of subject, but demonstrating its bare
possibility by its tragic truth, is the ballad of ‘Three Young Ladies.’
The father brings to mind the Greek bandit, the hero of About’s ‘Roi des
Montagnes,’ who keeps his daughter at school at Athens, and when she
wants a new piano, harries a village. As he returns from his rides, or
raids, the three maidens ask this feudal tyrant what he has brought for
them. The first, he knows, loves gold and finery; he has killed a knight
for her, and brought her the spoil. But the dead knight was her lover;
she strangles herself with the stolen chain, and dies beside his body.
Two maidens only welcomed the father on his next return. The second, he
knows, loves the chase; so he brings her a hunting-lance with a gold
band, having killed a wild huntsman to obtain it. The wild huntsman was
her lover, and she falls on the lance and dies beside him. One maiden
only greets him the next time. Flowers are her passion; so he brings her
flowers, having slain the bold gardener to obtain them. She takes the
flowers and seeks the body of the dead gardener, who was also her lover;
but flowers can inflict no wounds, so she stays beside him till the
flowers wither, and she withers with them. ‘The Black Knight’ has been
done full justice to by Longfellow. The practice of wearing visors in
the ages of chivalry made such tales a poetic possibility. Death comes
to joust in a king’s court, like a knight in black armour on black
steed; he kills all the champions, dances with the king’s daughter,
pours out a draught for the prince and princess, from which they quickly
grow pale and sink. The old king begs him to take him also, but he says
that “he only breaks flowers in spring,” and stalks away. In the ‘Luck
of Edenhall’ Uhland gets upon English ground. His own preserves are so
well stocked that he had no need to poach on those of the minstrels of
the Scottish Border. But the offence is a single one, and may be
forgiven for its admirable success and the world-wide interest of the
beautiful Cumbrian legend.
The trumpet-like bray and strange metre of this poem render it one of
the most difficult for a translator to grapple with; Longfellow,
however, has done it almost without fault, the only exception we might
take being to the repetition of the “crystal tall,” and the expression
“the cup to praise” instead of “the cup to honour.” But in sonorous
cadence his rendering equals the original. There is a thrilling
solemnity in the remark at the end, that the world will one day be
dashed to pieces like the shattered Luck of Edenhall. In a note below
Longfellow’s translation it is said, “The tradition on which this ballad
is founded, and the ‘shards of the Luck of Edenhall,’ still exist in
England. The goblet is in the possession of Sir Christopher Musgrave,
Bart. of Edenhall, Cumberland, and is not so entirely shattered as the
ballad leaves it.”
If not the very best of all the ballads, at least the most
characteristic of the poet’s ethical bent, is ‘The Singer’s Curse.’ With
this we may fitly conclude our specimens, as it is a declaration of the
greatness and holiness of the poet’s mission, and a prophecy of the
annihilation of all earthly pomp that is founded on injustice and wrong,
which it is the poet’s highest duty to raise his voice against. It might
also be entitled ‘The Martyr-Minstrel.’