Translator.
Phila. Repos., IV-64, Feb. 25, 1804, Phila.
PASSAGE FROM KLOPSTOCK'S MESSIAH.
So at the midnight hour draws nigh to the slumbering city
Pestilence. Couch'd on his broad spread wings lurks under the rampart
Death, bale-breathing. As yet unalarmed are the peaceable dwellers;
Close to his nightly-lamp the sage yet watches; and high friends
Over wine not unhallow'd, in shelter of odorous bowers,
Talk of the soul and of friendship, and weigh their immortal duration.
But too soon shall frightful Death, in a day of affliction
Pouncing over them, over them spread; in a day of moaning and anguish....
When with wringing of hands the bride for the bridegroom loud wails;
When, now of all her children bereft, the desperate mother
Furious curses the day on which she bore, and was born ... when
Weary with hollower eye, amid the carcases totter
Even the buriers ... till the sent Death-angel, descending,
Thoughtful on thunder-clouds, beholds all lonesome and silent,
Gazes the wide desolation, and long broods over the graves, fixt.
"Perhaps some other writer will throw this fine picture into blank verse so well, as to convince the public, that the beauties of Klopstock can be naturalized without strangeness, and his peculiarities retained without affectation; that quaintness, the unavoidable companion of neologism, is as needless to genius, as hostile to grace; the hexameter, until it is familiar, must repel, and, when it is familiar, may annoy; that it wants a musical orderliness of sound; and that its cantering capricious movement opposes the grave march of solemn majesty, and better suits the ordinary scenery of Theocritus than the empyreal visions of Klopstock."
From "Criticism on Klopstock's Messiah."
Lit. Mag. and Amer. Reg., I-468, Mar. 1804, Phila.
[F. G. Klopstock, Messias.]
THE GUARDIAN SPIRIT.
From the German of Matthison.
Whene'er day-light's parting gleam
A smiling form salutes my love,
And loiters near the murm'ring stream,
And glides beneath the conscious grove:
Ah! then my Henry's spirit see:
Soft joy and peace it brings to thee.