Mit meiner Macht
Um Mitternacht.
Um Mitternacht
Hab’ ich die Macht
In deine Hand gegeben:
Herr über Tod und Leben,
Du hältst die Wacht
Um Mitternacht.
If I had a strong personal liking for Rückert it might be excused. He was really an Eastern poet, rich in colour, but equally rich in thought.
The first poems of his I knew in my youth were his “Oestliche Rosen.” My father reviewed them (“Vermischte Schriften,” vol. v., p. 290). He declared he might have judged them by one letter, the letter K, which in Roman times meant condemnation, but which in Rückert’s case would give to his “Oestliche Rosen” their right title of “Köstliche Rosen.” One of Rückert’s greatest works, a real treasury of meditative thought and mature wisdom, was his “Weisheit des Brahmanen,” and this also appealed, no doubt, strongly to my own personal tastes. His translations of Oriental poetry, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, are perfect masterpieces. They often take away one’s breath by the extraordinary faithfulness and marvellous reproduction in German of plays on words and jingle of rhymes that seemed to be possible once, and once only, whether in Persian, Arabic, or Sanskrit. I may have been influenced by all this, and still more by my personal regard for the poet, but for all that I should strongly advise all who care for poetry, and for German poetry, to judge for themselves, and not to be disheartened if they do not strike gold on the first pages they open.