Works

Most high and mighty Czar of all flesh, ceaseless reducer of empires, unfathomable glutton in the whole realms of nature.
...

Mournful groans, as when a tempest lowers,
Echo from the dreary house of woe;
Death-notes rise from yonder minster's towers!
Bearing out a youth, they slowly go;
Yes! a youth unripe yet for the bier,...

Majesty of the nature of man! In crowds shall I seek thee?
'Tis with only a few that thou hast made thine abode.
Only a few ever count; the rest are but blanks of no value,...

I am a man! Let every one
Who is a man, too, spring
With joy beneath God's shining sun,
And leap on high, and sing!

To God's own image fair on earth
Its stamp I've power to show;...

Laura! a sunrise seems to break
Where'er thy happy looks may glow.
Joy sheds its roses o'er thy cheek,
Thy tears themselves do but bespeak
The rapture whence they flow;...

'Tis ended!
Welcome! 'tis ended
Oh thou sinner majestic,
All thy terrible part is now played!

Noble abased one!
Thou, of thy race beginner and ender!
Wondrous son of her fearfulest humor,...

I have a heartfelt aversion for crime, a twofold aversion,
Since 'tis the reason why man prates about virtue so much.
"What! thou hatest, then, virtue?" I would that by all it were practised,...

Which religion do I acknowledge? None that thou namest.
"None that I name? And why so?" Why, for religion's own sake?

Let the creative art breathe life, and the bard furnish spirit;
But the soul is expressed by Polyhymnia alone.

Earthly gods my lyre shall win your praise,
Though but wont its gentle sounds to raise
When the joyous feast the people throng;
Softly at your pompous-sounding names,...

[In spite of Mr. Carlyle's assertion of Schiller's "total deficiency in humor," [12] we think that the following poem suffices to show that he possessed the gift in no ordinary degree, and that if the aims of a genius so essent...

How does nature proceed to unite the high and the lowly
In mankind? She commands vanity 'tween them to stand!

Once more, then, we meet
In the circles of yore;
Let our song be as sweet
In its wreaths as before,
Who claims the first place
In the tribute of song?
The God to whose grace...

Fame with the vulgar expires; but, Muse immortal, thou bearest
Those whom thou lovest, who love thee, into Mnemosyne's arms.

I chanced the other eve,
But how I ne'er will tell,
The paper to receive.
That's published down in hell.

In general one may guess,
I little care to see
This free-corps of the press...

[The scenery of Gotthardt is here personified.]

To the solemn abyss leads the terrible path,
The life and death winding dizzy between;
In thy desolate way, grim with menace and wrath,...

Within a vale, each infant year,
When earliest larks first carol free,
To humble shepherds cloth appear
A wondrous maiden, fair to see.
Not born within that lowly place...

The clouds fast gather,
The forest-oaks roar
A maiden is sitting
Beside the green shore,
The billows are breaking with might, with might,
And she sighs aloud in the darkling night,...

Humanity's bright image to impair.
Scorn laid thee prostrate in the deepest dust;
Wit wages ceaseless war on all that's fair,
In angel and in God it puts no trust;...

Other masters one always can tell by the words that they utter;
That which he wisely omits shows me the master of style.