SPECIMENS OF FOREIGN STANDARD LITERATURE.*

THIS is the fourteenth volume of Mr. Ripley's series of Specimens from Foreign Standard Literature. It has already been some time before the public, and its merits are well known. Mr. Brooks, the principal translator of these lyrical pieces, has before this tried his hand at the work of translating. One or two of the dramatic masterpieces of Schiller have been very ably translated by him into English. His versions show an accurate knowledge of the German language no small accomplishment and a power of appreciating the spirit of the German poets; they show, too, uncommon facility and grace in English versification. Mr. Brooks is a very faithful translator; faithful both to the letter and spirit of his originals. He takes no liberties with his author's language or sentiments, but such as are necessary in transferring poetical conceptions from one language into another; at the same time, he generally succeeds in avoiding the stiffness which is apt to characterize very disagreeably those translations which are entitled to boast of their fidelity. This fidelity both to substance and form, in translating from one language to another, is absolutely essential to a good translation. We need not say, that a great proportion of the English versions from the ancient and foreign languages are sadly deficient in this leading excellence. Juster ideas on this subject have begun to prevail. Mr. Longfellow's extraordinary translations from nearly all the languages now spoken under the sun, and from some that are not, have set an example of the closest and most literal fidelity, and the freest rhythmical movement demonstrating not only that the problem can be solved, but solved in such a way that a person familiar with the languages, but a stranger to the particular works, would be at a loss to tell which was the original and which the translation. This example all future translators must follow, and approach as nearly as they can.

Mr. Brooks commands a rich and racy English style. He is a master of English composition, and in the choice of his words manifests a strict and correct taste. He uses instinctively what

*

Songs and Ballads, translated from Uhland, Körner, Bürger, and other German Lyric Poets. By CHARLES T. BROOKS. Boston: James Munroe & Co. 1842. 12mo. pp. 400.

all now understand and acknowledge to be the most forcible, expressive, and picturesque part of the composite language we have the good luck to call our mother tongue-namely, the Saxon element; but he so uses it as to make his style pointed, energetic, and direct, without painfully abstaining from the more sonorous words which we inherit, or have in some other way taken possession of, from the Latin and French. This mixture of different elements gives an enchanting variety to English style, that can be rivalled, we venture to say, by no other language now in existence. It enables an author, who has sounded all its powers, and mastered all its keys, to give his discourse the greatest precision, to express his ideas with the greatest fulness, to mark the slightest differences in the tones of thought, with the greatest readiness and force. And what can surpass the ever changing music which the language is shown to be capable of producing, both in verse and prose, in the works of the masters of English composition; in the varied and artful rhythms of Milton, and the stately cadences, scarcely less rhythmical, of Burke ?

But to return to the volume now before us. A former number of the series contains an excellent selection from the minor poems of Goethe and Schiller, translated chiefly, and admirably translated, by Mr. Dwight. But Goethe and Schiller, preeminent as they were, must not be considered as exhausting the lyrical treasures of German literature. These two great names have been so often and so loudly sounded in the trump of Fame, that foreign students are apt to forget that Germany has other poets and especially lyric poets-almost if not quite equally worthy of admiration. Germany is eminently a poetical land; the German heart is essentially lyrical; German feelings have been lyrical, and lyrically expressed from the very earliest periods of the national history. What were all the Minnesingers and Meistersingers of the Middle Ages, but so many lyrical warblers, through whose melodious voices the mighty German heart poured itself out? That bright beginning of German lyrical poetry has been followed by an unbroken series of poets whose genius has been lyrical, and whose works have been only a natural expression of German sentiment and feeling. Indeed, if we were to select any one word as more descriptive of the character of the German poetical literature than any other, it would be lyrical. Many of Goethe's most popular lyrical pieces are in substance the productions VOL. XXXIV. 3D s. VOL. XVI. NO. II.

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almost of the infancy of the German nation, adapted in style and expression to modern taste; and every one knows what treasures of fine lyric poetry have been disclosed to the world by the recent labors of German scholars, and published in large collections like the Knaben Wunderhorn. Scarcely a modern German poet is to be mentioned, who has not worked over the rich materials offered to the lyric muse in the Sagas, legends, and wondrous tales, which centre around the great heroic age of Germany. And then the outbreak of the German national spirit against the domination of the French was accompanied by a lyrical enthusiasm, equal to that which blazed in the Iambics of Archilochus, the Dithyrambs of Stesichorus, or the Elegiac Hexameters and Pentameters of Tyrtæus. From these endless treasures of poetry Mr. Brooks has made his very tasteful selection. The greatest number he has very properly taken from Uhland. We proceed, by way of conclusion, to give a few. The following is a good specimen of Uhland's naive simplicity.

SONG OF THE MOUNTAIN BOY.

The mountain shepherd boy am I ;
The castles all below me spy.
The sun sends me his earliest beam,
Leaves me his latest, lingering gleam.
I am the boy of the mountain!

The mountain torrent's home is here,
Fresh from the rock I drink it clear;
As out it leaps with furious force,
I stretch my arms and stop its course.
I am the boy of the mountain!

I claim the mountain for my own;
In vain the winds around me moan;
From north to south let tempests brawl, -
My song shall swell above them all.
I am the boy of the mountain!

Thunder and lightning below me lie,
Yet here I stand in upper sky;
I know them well, and cry,
"Harm not
My father's lowly, peaceful cot."
I am the boy of the mountain !

But when I hear the alarm-bell sound,

When watchfires gleam from the mountains round,
Then down I go and march along,

And swing my sword and sing my song.

I am the boy of the mountain!

The following poem is familiar to most readers, in another translation. Mr. Brooks had an able rival in his anonymous predecessor; but he has come out of the contest with honor.

THE PASSAGE.

Years have vanished, like a dream,
Since I ferried o'er this stream;
Flood and castle, as of old,
Glimmer now in evening's gold.

Two companions, loved and tried,
Then sailed over by my side;
One was fatherlike - the other
Young and generous as a brother.

One in quiet spent life's day,
Then sank quietly away;

But the other earlier passed

Home through battle and through blast.

When I thus live fondly o'er

Days gone by to come no more,

I must ever miss and mourn

Friends whom death has from me torn.

Yet when heart and heart unite,
Friendship's chain is then most bright;
Thus the friends to memory dear
Still, in soul, are with me here.

Threefold fare, O pilot, take,
For a grateful stranger's sake;
Two, that ferried o'er with me,
Spirits were, unseen by thee.

We give the following specimen of the fiery genius of Germany's great war-poet-Körner.

MY NATIVE LAND.

Where is the minstrel's native land?
Where sparks of noble soul flashed high,
Where garlands bloomed in honor's eye,
Where manly bosoms glowed with joy,
Touched by Religion's altar-brand,
There was my native land!

Name me the minstrel's native land.

Though now her sons lie slain in heaps,
Though, wounded and disgraced, she weeps,
Beneath her soil the freeman sleeps.
The land of oaks - the German land
They called my native land!

Why weeps the minstrel's native land? -
To see her people's princes cower
Before the wrathful tyrant's power;
She weeps, that, in the stormy hour,
No soul at her high call will stand.
That grieves my native land!

Whom calls the minstrel's native land? -
She calls the voiceless gods; her cries,
Like thunder-storms, assail the skies;
She bids her sons, her freemen, rise;
On righteous Heaven's avenging hand
She calls- my native land!

What will the minstrel's native land? ·
She'll crush the slaves of despots' power,
Drive off the bloodhounds from her shore,
And suckle freeborn sons once more,
Or lay them free beneath the sand.

That will my native land!

And hopes the minstrel's native land?

She hopes she hopes!

Her cause is just.

Her faithful sons will wake- -they must.
In God Most High she puts her trust;

On his great altar leans her hand,

And hopes-my native land!