TRANSLATION OF A PASSAGE IN OTTFRIED'S METRICAL PARAPHRASE OF THE GOSPEL [This paraphrase, written about the time of Charlemagne, is by no means deficient in occasional passages of considerable poetic merit. There is a flow and a tender enthusiasm in the following lines which even in the translation will not, I flatter myself, fail to interest the reader. Ottfried is describing the circumstances immediately following the birth of our Lord. Most interesting is it to consider the effect when the feelings are wrought above the natural pitch by the belief of something mysterious, while all the images are purely natural. Then it is that religion and poetry strike deepest. Biog. Lit., 1817, i. 203-4.1]

? 1799.

SHE gave with joy her virgin breast;
She hid it not, she bared the breast
Which suckled that divinest babe!
Blessed, blessed were the breasts

Which the Saviour infant kiss'd;

And blessed, blessed was the mother

Who wrapp'd his limbs in swaddling clothes,
Singing placed him on her lap,

Hung o'er him with her looks of love,

And soothed him with a lulling motion.
Blessed! for she shelter'd him

From the damp and chilling air;
Blessed, blessed! for she lay

With such a babe in one blest bed,
Close as babes and mothers lie!
Blessed, blessed evermore,

With her virgin lips she kiss'd,
With her arms, and to her breast,
She embraced the babe divine,
Her babe divine the virgin mother!
There lives not on this ring of earth
A mortal that can sing her praise.
Mighty mother, virgin pure,
In the darkness and the night
For us she bore the heavenly Lord!

1 First published as a footnote to Chapter X of the Biographia Literaria (ed. 1817, i. 203-4). First collected in 1863 (Appendix, pp. 401-2). The translation is from Olfridi Evang., lib. i, cap. xi, 11. 73-108 (included in Schilter's Thesaurus Antiquitatum Teutonicarum, pp. 50-1, Biog. Lit., 1847, i. 213). Otfrid, 'a monk at Weissenburg in Elsass', composed his Evangelienbuch about 870 A.D. (Note by J. Shawcross, Biog. Lit., 1907, ii. 259). As Coleridge says that he read through Ottfried's metrical paraphrase of the Gospel' when he was at Göttingen, it may be assumed that the translation was made in 1799.

5 Saviour infant] infant Saviour 1863.

CATULLIAN HENDECASYLLABLES1

HEAR, my belovéd, an old Milesian story!-
High, and embosom'd in congregated laurels,
Glimmer'd a temple upon a breezy headland;
In the dim distance amid the skiey billows

Rose a fair island; the god of flocks had blest it.
From the far shores of the bleat-resounding island
Oft by the moonlight a little boat came floating,
Came to the sea-cave beneath the breezy headland,
Where amid myrtles a pathway stole in mazes
Up to the groves of the high embosom'd temple.
There in a thicket of dedicated roses,
Oft did a priestess, as lovely as a vision,
Pouring her soul to the son of Cytherea,
Pray him to hover around the slight canoe-boat,
And with invisible pilotage to guide it
Over the dusk wave, until the nightly sailor
Shivering with ecstasy sank upon her bosom.

? 1799.

5

ΤΟ

15

THE HOMERIC HEXAMETER 2

DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED

STRONGLY it bears us along in swelling and limitless billows, Nothing before and nothing behind but the sky and the ocean,

? 1799.

1 First published in 1834. These lines, which are not 'Hendecasyllables', are a translation of part of Friedrich von Matthisson's Milesisches Mährchen. For the original see Note to Poems, 1852. There is no evidence as to the date of composition. The emendations in lines 5 and 6 were first printed in P. W., 1893.

2 First published (together with the Ovidian Elegiac Metre', &c.) in Friendship's Offering, 1834: included in P. W., 1834. An acknowledgement that these experiments in metre' are translations from Schiller was first made in a Note to Poems, 1844, p. 371. The originals were given on p. 372. There is no evidence as to the date of composition.

5 blest] plac'd 1834, 1844, 1852. 1834, 1852.

6 bleat-resounding] bleak-resounding

16 nightly] mighty 1834, 1844.

THE OVIDIAN ELEGIAC METRE

DESCRIBED AND EXEMPLIFIED

IN the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column; In the pentameter aye falling in melody back.

1799.

ON A CATARACT 1

FROM A CAVERN NEAR THE SUMMIT OF A MOUNTAIN PRECIPICE

UNPERISHING youth!

Thou leapest from forth

STROPHE

The cell of thy hidden nativity;
Never mortal saw

The cradle of the strong one;

Never mortal heard

The gathering of his voices;

The deep-murmured charm of the son of the rock,
That is lisp'd evermore at his slumberless fountain.
There's a cloud at the portal, a spray-woven veil
At the shrine of his ceaseless renewing;

It embosoms the roses of dawn,

It entangles the shafts of the noon,

5

ΤΟ

And into the bed of its stillness

The moonshine sinks down as in slumber,

15

That the son of the rock, that the nursling of heaven
May be born in a holy twilight!

First published in 1834. For the original (Unsterblicher Jüngling) by Count F. L. Stolberg see Note to Poems, 1844, pp. 371-2.

On a Cataract-Title] Improved from Stolberg.

1852.

2-3

Thou streamest from forth

On a Cataract, &c. 1844,

The cleft of thy ceaseless Nativity MS. S. T. C.

Between 7 and 13.

The murmuring songs of the Son of the Rock,

When he feeds evermore at the slumberless Fountain.
There abideth a Cloud,

At the Portal a Veil,

At the shrine of thy self-renewing;

It embodies the Visions of Dawn,

It entangles, &c. MS. S. T. C.

Here, first, an infant to her breast,
Him his loving mother prest;

5

And kissed the babe, and blessed the day,
And prayed as mothers use to pray.

III

'Vouchsafe him health, O God! and give

The child thy servant still to live!'
But God had destined to do more

Through him, than through an arméd power.

IV

God gave him reverence of laws,

Yet stirring blood in Freedom's cause

A spirit to his rocks akin,

The eye of the hawk, and the fire therein!

First published in Sibylline Leaves, 1817: included in 1828, 1829, and 1834. There is no evidence as to the date of composition.

20 Below thee the cliff inaccessible MS. S. T. C

22-3

Flockest in thy Joyance,

Wheelest, shatter'st, start'st. MS. S. T. C.

? 1799.

To Nature and to Holy Writ
Alone did God the boy commit:

Where flashed and roared the torrent, oft
His soul found wings, and soared aloft!

VI

The straining oar and chamois chase
Had formed his limbs to strength and grace:
On wave and wind the boy would toss,
Was great, nor knew how great he was!

VII

He knew not that his chosen hand,
Made strong by God, his native land
Would rescue from the shameful yoke
Of Slavery the which he broke!

20

25

THE VISIT OF THE GODS1

IMITATED FROM SCHILLER

NEVER, believe me,

Appear the Immortals,
Never alone:

Scarce had I welcomed the Sorrow-beguiler,

Iacchus but in came Boy Cupid the Smiler;

Lo! Phoebus the Glorious descends from his throne !

They advance, they float in, the Olympians all!

With Divinities fills my
Terrestrial hall!

How shall I yield you
Due entertainment,
Celestial quire?

Me rather, bright guests! with your wings of upbuoyance Bear aloft to your homes, to your banquets of joyance,

5

ΤΟ

1 First published in Sibylline Leaves, 1817: included in 1828, 1829 ('Vision of the Gods', Contents, vol. i, pp. 322-3 of both editions),

and in 1834.

28 Slavery] Slavery, all editions to 1834.