FROM SCHILLER.
I.
SO wilt thou, Faithless! from me sever,
With all thy brilliant phantasy?
With all thy joys and sorrows never
For prayers or tears come back to me?
Oh, golden time of youthful life!
Can nothing, Swift One, stay thy motion?
In vain! thy waves, with ruthless strife,
Flow on to the eternal ocean.
II.
Quenched are the glorious suns that glowing
Bright o'er my youthful pathway shone,
And thoughts the prescient heart o'erflowing
With burning inspirations, gone.
For ever fled the trusting faith
In visions of my youthful dreaming,
Reality has risen to scathe
Their all too fair and godlike gleaming.
III.
As once with wild desire entreating,
Pygmalion the stone enclasped,
'Till o'er the marble pale lips fleeting
Life, hope, and passion glowed at last;
So, around Nature's cold form weaving
My youthful arms, her lips I pressed,
Until her lifeless bosom heaving,
Throbbed life-like on my poet-breast.