Du liebest Geld und Gut, noch so, dass dein Erbarmen
Der Armen fühlt. Du fliehst die Armuth, nicht die Armen.
We have not been able in this instance to preserve both the rhyme and the metre, and prefer to keep the latter. The lines convey a noble eulogy.
Thou lovest gold and goods, yet so that thy compassion
Feels for the needy still, shunning need, and not the needy.
Here are two more from German sources. We have forgotten who wrote them, but our readers may remember. The turn of the thought in the second is novel and rather pretty:
Ihr sagt, die Zeit vergeht!
Weil Ihr das falsch versteht.
Die Zeit ist ewig: Ihr vergeht!
We say. Time passes! Is it so?
Time waits! ’Tis only we who go.
Schon vier Mal kam ich, deine Diener sprachen
Du seist nicht da, man liess mich nicht herein.
Mein Kind! um eine Göttin mir zu sein
Brauchst du dich ja nicht unsichtbar zu machen.
Four times I called, the servant said,
“She’s out!”—I might not see my maid.
To seem a goddess, dear, to me,
Invisible thou needst not be!
The greatest of German poets are not ashamed to stoop to epigram, and sometimes aim to reproduce the metre which Martial preferred. Of the following essays in elegiacs the first three are by Schiller, the others by Emanuel Geibel: