POEMS FROM THE GERMAN.*

Ix would seem at first sight a much simpler task to translate from the German into English than from any other language ancient or modern. There is so much ground of common thought and common instinct between us, so much more community of culture, and so much that is of like colour in the special region of private and domestic life, out of

* Poe= from the German. By Richard Garnett. Bell and Dahl's%

which modern poetry chiefly springs, that it would seem to be a far easier task to translate Goethe than to translate Homer or Horace. Yet we are not sure that this is so. Certainly Mr. Martin's translations from Goethe were by no means so felicitous as some of his renderings of Horace and of Catullus, and difficult as it is for a modern nature to strip off its complex habit and render truly the simplicity and "freshness of the early world," it is probably even more difficult to take up attitudes of mind closely related to our own, yet essentially distinck—harder even to vary the species than the genus. At all events, it is far easier to deceive oneself as to the true nature of a translation from a closely-allied literature than of one from a literature of wholly different type. The shades of thought are so much finer, a deviation from the spirit of the original is so much less clearly marked, that, whether it be harder or not to translate,—it is far harder to know whether the result is a true translation. And the difficulty in discriminating success is in fact a difficulty in the task itself. Where the shades of difference are so fine that the poetic insight is not keenly alive to the distinctions, it will not often happen that the mere poetic instinct has caught them faithfully. Yet failure in this respect destroys the whole value of the poem ; for the essence of poetry is the living organization of the imagination in words, and where there is any sort of jar between the inner essence and the outer form, there at once the artificial peeps out through the natural, and spoils all. What is true of the transformation of modern poetry in general from one language into another is even especially true of the transformation of the greatest of the German poets, and of his finest poems. As between poet and poet, he, probably, is—ceeteris paribus— the most translatable whose thought is most vividly and simply unique,—marked by the distinetest type. Milton is more translatable than Shakspeare, because there is so much more personal an impress on his thought ; Dante more translatable than Ariosto ; Schiller and Heine more translatable than Goethe. Indeed, of almost all first-class poems there are none, notwithstanding their simplicity, perhaps so incapable of translation as Goethe's songs, from their very liquid and fluent character. It is almost like the difficulty of photographing a waterfall so to fix the thought of Goethe's songs as to transfer them to another tongue ; the thought ripples in your mind even as you try to catch it, and when it is fixed in another language it looks as unlike itself as a marble wave. Mr. Garnett has the merit of comparative literalness in these translations, and this is a merit ; for without it there may be a new poem, but certainly no shadow of the old one. Yet it requires a poet to be literal in such a way as to preserve the ethereal spirit as well as the body of such poems as these ; and Mr. Garnett is not to be called a poet. For example, in the following most exquisite song he is much nearer both to the form and substance of Goethe than Mr. Martin, yet all the motion, all the light is vanished, and it is Goethe no more. Mr. Garnett gives the skeleton of Goethe's poem ; Mr. Martin's verses are more or less suggested by Goethe's ; but neither of these versions give anything that awakens for a moment that thrill of simple and delicious pleasure with which the poem itself, like the wild flower whose discovery it relates, fills the mind of the reader :

" GE/UNDER.

" Ich ping tin Waldo So far inlet hin„ Und niehts zu suchen Das war mein Sinn.

"Im Schatten Bah ich Ein Blitmehen Mahn, Wie Sterne leuebtend, Win Aeuglein gelatin.

"lab wellt' es brechen, Da sae es fein ' Sell lab zum Welken Gebrochen seyn?'

"Ich grub's mit alien Den Wilrzlein aus, Zum garten trng lab's Am hub/chart Hatill.

"Und pflanzt' es wieder Am sullen Ort ; Nun zweigt es imraer Und bliklit so fort."

"IN A GLADE (Mr. Garnett).

" In e. glade I idly went, Nought to seek Was my intent " I saw a flower In shelter shy, Fair as a star, Sweet as an eye.

"I stooped to pluck it, Then did it say, ' Why be gather'd To fade away ?'

"I gently looged The earth around, Bore it home to my Garden-ground ; "In a nook The flower I set ; There it grows and Blossoms yet"

"TREASURE TROVE (Mr.

Martin). " Through the forest idly As my steps I bent, With a free and happy heart, Singing as I went,

" Cowering in the shade I

Did a floweret spy, ' Bright as any star in heaven, Sweet as any eye.

"Down to pluck it stooping, Thus to me it said, 'Wherefore pluck me only To wither and to fade?'

" Up with its roots I dug it, I bore it as it grew, And in my garden-plot at home

I planted it anew,

"All in a still and shady place,

Beside my home so dear; And now it thanks me for my Nina

And blossoms every year."

There are verses—the third and fourth especially—in both these versions which, read in direct connexion with the original, give one almost a cold shudder, so changed and stiff do they seem in its neighbourhood. Neither of them render the characteristic expression, "Da sagt' es fein" (It softly said) at all ; and both translate the flower's simple question, "Am I to he broken to fade away ?" with a rationalizing "why" and "wherefore," which destroy the whole beauty and pathos of the flower's language. Then, in the next verse, the tenderness of the diminutiveWiirzlein " "with all its little roots," and the beauty of the last line, "I took it to the garden by the pretty house," are lost by both translators. Yet, if all these obvious faults were mended, there would still he a characteristic softness and simplicity of childlike sentiment that no one could translate into English. The very first verse no one could catch in English; it belongs to a different species of sentiment, which probably the language is incapable of rendering, which seems to us far more hopeless of attainment than almost any form of Homeric naiveté, though the latter is so much further removed from ours. How Mr. Garnett could have persuaded himself to print his transla_ tion of the serenade, or "Night song," as Goethe calls it—to us the most perfect gem of its kind in any language—we can scarcely understand. A scholar who could feel the beauty of the piece sufficiently to wish to translate it, should never have been content with the lame and nearly unintelligible lines which he offers us in its place. Or compare Kral.' chen's beautiful little song from "Egmont" with this translation: Corraa. 'Ma. Gwastwrr.

" Freudvoll "Cheerful Und leidvoll And tearful, Gedankenvoll seyn; And thoughtful to be; Langen Waiting, Und bangen, Debating, In schwebender Pets; Irresolutely ; Himmelhoch jauchzend, Cast into darkness, Zum Tode betriibt, Shouting above, Gliichlich allein 0! happy alone let die Seele die liebt." Is the heart with its love."

Perhaps it is impossible to translate "lawn mid bangen, in schwebender Pein ;" but it is no more "waiting, debating, irresolutely," than it is "hoping and moping alternately," or any other piece of intolerable common sense. In his longer poems and reveries, Goalie's poetry was much less subtly organized—if we may so speak—less the wild flower of its native woods,—more the expression of the common thought of cultivated Europe, and here, accordingly, it is comparatively possible to follow him. Mr. Garnett's translation of Faust's celebrated "Sunset reverie" is spirited, and tolerably faithful. We extract it as a specimen of the best he can do :

0 happy he Who yet may hope to rise from error's sea!

Our little lore is little aid, and what Perchance were worth the knowing, we know not Yet be not the last ray of this fair day Dimm'd by the plaints of an uneasy mind ; Lo! where the sun sinks bright, and bathes in light The huts with countless clustering leaves entwined !

It sinks, the orb has lived his term of life, Yet westward wending, he recruits his ray, 0 for a wing to lift me from this strife, Plant me in heaven, and launch me on his way !

Girt with the rich resplendence would I sail, And watch the wide world at my feet unroll'd, Each hill alit, a calm on every vale, And every brook a wandering thread of gold.

Not all the savage mountains' soaring peaks Were barriers to impede my godlike flight, The spreading s6, to her remotest creeks Lay as a map 'neath my undazzled sight.

The sun at length in night's cold clasp must fade,

But what avails my ardent course to bind?

I chase the fleeting splendour undismayed, The day before me and the night behind, The unbounded heaven above, the unbounded sea Below.—Bright vision, art thou vanishing?

Forbear thy dreams fond soul, 'tis not for thee To beat immortal with mortal wing.

Yet is there not a son of clay, but feels Some high emotion in his breast take birth, When, from the blue that her frail form conceals, The lark's glad song descends to earth, When eagles wide their wings expand O'er the steep mountain's piny crest, And o'es long wastes of sea and land The crane steers to her southern nest."

Mr. Garnett is more successful with Heine, who has, indeed, a unique stamp of genius, which renders him, as we said, more apprehensible; just as it is easier to make a good etching of Rembrandt than of Raphael. The grim cross-threads of feeling in the following song, where a horrible mixture of saving and destroying impulses worthy almost of a St. Just are delineated with Heine's usual power, is fairly rendered,—far better than the softer lights and shadows of Goethe's genius ;

"THREE AND TWO.

"Shy from a sullen rack of clouds Upon a stormy sea Look'd forth the moon, into the boat We stepp'd, and we were Three.

"The oars with stroke monotonous Plash'd down into the sea, And wild the foaming waves arose, And sprinkled us all three.

"And in the boat as pale and chill And motionless she stood, As she a marble image were, And not of flesh and blood.

"Now hides the moon her face, and shrills

A north wind cold and bleak, And high above our heads we hear An agonizing shriek.

"it is the white and ghostly mew, And at the evil note, That sounds like voice of warning, we All shudder in the boat.

" Have I a fever ? 't a jest Of nightly phantasy?

Mocks me a dream? If so, it is A ghastly mockery !

" suNsEr.

"(FAUST loquitur.)

A ghastly mockery ! I dream That I a Saviour am, And bear my cross of woe extreme As patient as a lamb.

"Poor beauty, prithee quake not so, 'Tis I will set thee free From sin and shame and want and woe, And all thy misery.

"Poor beauty, prithee quake not so, Though hard the cure may be, My heart will break, and yet I know That death is good for thee.

"0 mockery and evil dream! A madman's ghastly lot!

Dark broods the night, loud howls the sea 0 God, forsake me not!

"Forsake me not, thou clement God, Thou Merciful ! Shaddai ! It plashes in the water. Woe ! Jehovah ! Adonai!

"The sun broke, towards the smiling land We steer'd our glad canoe, And when we stepp'd out on the strand, Then were we only Two."

Mr. Garnett shows considerable insight into the main structure— the stein as it were,—of these German poems; it is the delicate flower and leaves that he, like most of his predecessors, fails to reproduce.