Den dieses Lagers lärmendes Gewühl, Der Pferde Wiehern, der Trompete Schmettern, Es giebt ein anders Glück und andre Freuden. Ins Leben heimkehrt, in die Menschlich keit; Und heimwärts schlägt der sanfte Friedens marsch. Nicht die Petarde braucht sie mehr zu sprengen; My son, let us not undervalue old strict regulations! They are costly, invaluable weights, which the oppressed appended to the impetuous will of their oppressors, for arbitary power always was dreaded. The road of order, with all its crooked windings, does not lead about. The dreadful path of the cannon-ball is straight from the lightning-it rapidly arrives by the nearest road, and crushing, opens itself a way to crush. My son! the road which men travel, and which is attended with blessings, follows the course of rivers, the natural bendings of vallies; it turns round the wheat-field and the vine-clad hill out of regard for the measured limits of property, and thus it reaches a little later, but securely, the goal.-Quest. O! listen to your father, listen to him who is both a hero and humane.Oct. Your language, my son, is that of the nurseling of a camp. A fifteen years' war has been your school. You never beheld peace! There is a higher worth, my son, than that of warlike deeds; the aim and object of war itself is not war. 'Tis not the great, the rapid deeds of force, those astonishing wonders of the moment, which produce calm, solid, and long lasting happiness. The soldier builds with canvas in baste and hurry his airy city; it creates a momentary noise and agitation; the market is lively, roads and rivers are covered with goods, trade is in full activity; but suddenly a morning dawns when the tents disappear, the hordes march forwards, the ground, the trodden-down fields, remain desolate as a church-yard, and the harvest of the year is destroyed.-Mar. O! father, counsel peace to the Emperor! I'll gladly give the bloody laurel for the first violet of the month of March, the fragrant pledge of renovated earth!-Oct. How are you? Whence this sudden emotion?-Max. I never beheld peace, said you? But I have seen it, honoured father, I just come from it. My road led me through countries where the war has not penetrated. O father! life has charms which we never knew. We only navigated desert coasts, like a strolling people of robbers, who, confined within their narrow dampish ships, dwell with wild manners on the dreary sea, knowing nothing of the large continent but the bays where they may venture to land for plunder. Of all that the land conceals most precious in its interior valleys, we never beheld any thing in our wild course.-Oct. Aud has this journey exhibited it to your view?-Mux. It was the first pleasant excursion in my life. Tell me what is the object and reward of the painful toil which robbed me of my youth, and left my heart desolate, and my mind that is still unadorned by knowledge, unquenched? The noisy tumult of the camp, the neighing of horses, the sounding of trumpets, the ever regular clockwork hours of military service, the exercising the troops, the word of command, all this is nothing to a longing heart; the soul has no share in these vain turmoils. There are other joys and other happiness.-Oct. You learnt much on this short journey, my son !-Max. O happy day! when the soldier at length returns home to lead a life of humanity; when the colours are flying on the joyful march, and the band plays homewards the sweet airs of peace; when hats and helmets are adorned with green boughs, the last plundering of the fields! The gates of cities open of themselves; there is no need of cannon to batter them. The ramparts around are filled with peaceable people who shout in the air a merry peal of bells is heard from all the steeples announcing the joyful vespers of the bloody day. Huzzaing crowds come swarming from villages and towns, and obstruct the march of the troops with their pleasing anxious importunity. Glad to have lived to see that day, the old man shakes hands with his returned son, who re-enters a stranger upon his long forsaken property; the tree which at his departure bent like a switch, shelters him under his large branches on his return, and she whom he left at the nurse's breast, now grown a handsome girl, advances modestly to meet him. O happy he for whom a door is open, whom tender arms are ready to receive in their soft embrace! 812. Gering nicht achten is a poetical license for nicht gering achten. The separable compound verbs formed with adjectives, follow the same rule as those formed with particles: they admit no other preposition in the middle but zu in the infinitive. You may say, Ich habe keine Ursache ihn gering zu achten, I have no reason to despise him. Geringachten, reg. sep. comp. act. to have little esteem for; to undervalue, to despise. 813. Köstlich unschätsbare Gewichte sind's, in prose, es sind köstliche unschätzbare Gewichte, they are costly, invaluable weights. The adj. köstlich, though used adverbially, is really intended as an adjective. Goethe and Schiller are both fond of this construction, which certainly is a source of energy in poetry. 814. Die der bedrängte Mensch-band, which the oppressed man-tied or appended. The Germans frequently generalize in the singular, oppressed man denoting here oppressed mankind, or the oppressed in general. Bedrängen, insep. act. comp. verb, to straiten, to oppress, to tor ment. "Verloren ist der Tag und schändlich sind die Stunden 815. Der Dränger, sub. masc. the persecutor, the op pressor. 816. Ging er auch, instead of wann er auch ging, though it went, though it should go. Wenn auch, sec. 641. Wenn may be omitted in this case, just as well as when it denotes simply the conditional if, sec. 75. 817. Durch Krümmen, through crooked roads. Krümme here is the sub. fem. the bend, the arch, the crookedness, the twist or twisting, turning. But seven lines lower it is the verbal substantive neuter, das Krümmen, the bending. 818. Ein Umweg, sub. masc. a road that goes in the end to the right spot, but leads about so that you arrive at it later than by the direct road. Ein Abweg is a road that leads from the spot you want to get at. Ein Unweg, though it may lead to the intended spot, is no road at all. Observe this difference. Luther translates Job, xii. 24, "Causes them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way," by Er macht sie irre auf einem Unwege, da kein Weg ist. 819. Umgeht das Weitzenfeld, goes round the wheatfield. Umgehen is an insep. comp. verb, to go about, to go round: ich umgehe, ich umging, ich habe umgangen. In this sense umgehen governs the accusative, like any other verb in which the preposition um answers to the Latin "circum," sec. 700. Voss translates Virgil's "Nec vespertinus circumgemit ursus ovile," "Auch kein nächtlicher Bär umbrummt die Hürde des Schäfers." But when umgehen is a sep. neut. verb, it is conjugated with seyn, and denotes to go about, to haunt, to have intercourse, to use. Wir sind uns ein paar Meilen umgegangen, we went a few miles about. Es geht in dem Hause um, that house is haunted. Man ist schlecht mit ihm umgeganWe also say, Mit umgehender gen, they used him ill. Post, by return of post. 820. Sicher doch, yet securely, would be in prose, jedoch sicher. 821. In Hast und Eile, sec. 531. 822. Und um des Jahres Aernte ist's gethan, and the harvest of the year is done for; it is all over with the harvest of the year, it is destroyed. Just as we had Da war's um ihn geschehn, sec. 276. 823. Das duft ge Pfand, a contraction for das duftige Pfand, the fragrant pledge. Duftig, adj. emitting vapours, fragrant, from duften, sec. 662. 824. Ich hab' den Frieden nie gesehn? I never beheld peace? The younger Piccolomini is repeating the observation his father made 22 lines before, in order to contradict it. 825. Haust, contr. for hauset, from hausen, reg. neut. verb, to dwell; to behave: and actively, to take under one's roof, to lodge. As a neut. verb, it is generally taken in a bad sense, to be a bad housekeeper; to behave ill, to do mischief. Hence we also say figuratively, der Feind hat übel im Lande gehauset, the enemy behaved shockingly in the country; der Sturm hat schrecklich im Walde gehauset, the storm has caused great havoc in the wood. 826. Vom grossen Land, poetically, instead of von dem festen Lande, of the continent. 827. Der peinlichen, of the toilsome one; and lower down, dem lechzenden, the longing one, von friedlichen, with peaceable ones; das längstverlassne, the long-forsaken one. Our poets allow themselves to separate, as it were, the adjective from its substantive, even when it is an epithet; but then they give it the gender, number, and case, of the noun to which it should be attached, as here, Der peinlichen Arbeit, dem lechzenden Herzen, von friedlichen Menschen, das längstverlassne Eigenthum. Goethe and Schiller are both fond of this construction, which has indeed a very good effect. It recals the reader more forcibly to the object, by giving it a new shade of colour. 828. Nicht die Petarde braucht sie mehr zu sprengen, the petard needs no longer better them. This French word pétarde has a disagreeable effect. It is a kind of battering fieldpiece, in the shape of a shortened cone. Brauchen, to stand in need of, to have occasion for; gebrauchen, to make use of. 829. We select for our observations a fable of S. G. Bürde, of Breslau, who was born in 1753, and justly esteemed for his poetical translation of Milton's Paradise Lost: it is entitled, Die beiden Biber, the Two Beavers : Ein Biber, schon vor Alter bleich, Das Wohl des Ganzen Hauptzweck war, Er streifte Tag für Tag durchs Land, Geschäftig alle Neuigkeiten Durch schnellen Umlauf zu verbreiten. Der alte, kluge Biber fand Nichts als den traurigsten Verfall: |