Lifeless--how lifeless!--see, oh see, before me It lies cold--stiff!--O God!--and with that blood I feel, as swoops the dizzy darkness o'er me, Mine own life mingled--ebbing in the flood-- Hark, at the door they knock--more loud within me-- More awful still--its sound the dread heart gave! Gladly I welcome the cold arms that win me-- Fire, quench thy tortures in the icy grave!
Francis--a God that pardons dwells in heaven-- Francis, the sinner--yes--she pardons thee-- So let my wrongs unto the earth be given: Flame seize the wood!--it burns--it kindles--see! There--there his letters cast--behold are ashes-- His vows--the conquering fire consumes them here: His kisses--see--see all--all are only ashes-- All, all--the all that once on earth were dear!
Trust not the roses which your youth enjoyeth, Sisters, to man's faith, changeful as the moon! Beauty to me brought guilt--its bloom destroyeth: Lo, in the judgment court I curse the boon: Tears in the headsman's gaze--what tears?--tis spoken! Quick, bind mine eyes--all soon shall be forgot-- Doomsman--the lily hast thou never broken? Pale doomsman--tremble not!
[12] "Und Empfindung soll mein Richtschwert seyn." A line of great vigour in the original, but which, if literally translated, would seem extravagant in English.
[The poem we have just concluded was greatly admired at the time of its first publication, and it so far excels in art most of the earlier efforts by the author, that it attains one of the highest secrets in true pathos. It produces interest for the _criminal_ while creating terror for the _crime_. This, indeed, is a triumph in art never achieved but by the highest genius. The inferior writer, when venturing upon the grandest stage of passion, (which unquestionably exists in the delineation of great guilt as of heroic virtue,) falls into the error either of gilding the crime in order to produce sympathy for the criminal, or, in the spirit of a spurious morality, of involving both crime and criminal in a common odium. It is to discrimination between the doer and the deed, that we owe the sublimest revelations of the human heart: in this discrimination lies the key to the emotions produced by the Oedipus and Macbeth. In the brief poem before us a whole drama is comprehended. Marvellous is the completeness of the pictures it presents--its mastery over emotions the most opposite--its fidelity to nature in its exposition of the disordered and despairing mind in which tenderness becomes cruelty, and remorse for error tortures itself into scarce conscious crime.