[52] This poem is very characteristic of the noble ease with which Schiller often loves to surprise the reader, by the sudden introduction of matter for the loftiest reflection in the midst of the most familiar subjects. What can be more accurate and happy than the poet's description of the national dance, as if such description were his only object—the outpouring, as it were, of a young gallant intoxicated by the music, and dizzy with the waltz? Suddenly and imperceptibly the reader finds himself elevated from a trivial scene. He is borne upward to the harmony of the sphere. He bows before the great law of the universe—the young gallant is transformed into the mighty teacher; and this without one hard conceit —without one touch of pedantry. It is but a flash of light; and where glowed the playful picture shines the solemn moral.
[53] The first five verses in the original of this poem are placed as a motto on Goethe's statue in the Library at Weimar. The poet does not here mean to extol what is vulgarly meant by the gifts of fortune; he but develops a favorite idea of his, that, whatever is really sublime and beautiful, comes freely down from heaven; and vindicates the seeming partiality of the gods, by implying that the beauty and the genius given, without labor, to some, but serve to the delight of those to whom they are denied.
[54] Achilles.
[55] "Nur ein Wunder kann dich tragen In das schoene Wunderland."—SCHILLER, Sehnsucht.
[56] This simile is nobly conceived, but expressed somewhat obscurely. As Hercules contended in vain against Antaeus, the Son of Earth—so long as the earth gave her giant offspring new strength in every fall,—so the soul contends in vain with evil—the natural earth-born enemy, while the very contact of the earth invigorates the enemy for the struggle. And as Antaeus was slain at last, when Hercules lifted him from the earth, and strangled him while raised aloft, so can the soul slay the enemy (the desire, the passion, the evil, the earth's offspring), when bearing it from earth itself, and stifling it in the higher air.
[57] By this Schiller informs us elsewhere that he does not mean death alone; but that the thought applies equally to every period of life when we can divest ourselves of the body and perceive or act as pure spirits; we are truly then under the influence of the sublime.
[58] Duke Bernard of Weimar, one of the heroes of the Thirty Years' war.
[59] These verses were sent by Schiller to the then Electoral High Chancellor, with a copy of his "William Tell."
[60] Addressed in the original to Mdlle. Slevoigt, on her marriage to Dr. Sturm.
[61] This was the title of the publication in which many of the finest of Schiller's "Poems of the Third Period" originally appeared.