[2] This most exquisite love poem is founded on the platonic notion, that souls were united in a pre-existent state, that love is the yearning of the spirit to reunite with the spirit with which it formerly made one—and which it discovers on earth. The idea has often been made subservient to poetry, but never with so earnest and elaborate a beauty.
[3] "Und Empfindung soll mein Richtschwert seyn." A line of great vigor in the original, but which, if literally translated, would seem extravagant in English.
[4] Joseph, in the original.
[5] The youth's name was John Christian Weckherlin.
[6] Venus.
[7] Originally Laura, this having been one of the "Laura-Poems," as the Germans call them of which so many appeared in the Anthology (see Preface). English readers will probably not think that the change is for the better.
[8] Tityus.
[9] This concluding and fine strophe is omitted in the later editions of Schiller's "Poems."
[10] Hercules who recovered from the Shades Alcestis, after she had given her own life to save her husband, Admetus. Alcestis, in the hands of Euripides (that woman-hater as he is called!) becomes the loveliest female creation in the Greek drama.
[11] i. e. Castor and Pollux are transferred to the stars, Hercules to Olympus, for their deeds on earth.