RESOLUTION.
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.’