* * * * *

ROUSSEAU.[11]

    Oh, Monument of Shame to this our time,
    Dishonouring record to thy Mother Clime! 
    Hail, Grave of Rousseau!  Here thy sorrows cease. 
    Freedom and Peace from earth and earthly strife! 
    Vainly, sad seeker, didst thou search through life
    To find—­(found now)—­the Freedom and the Peace. 
    When will the old wounds scar?  In the dark age
    Perish’d the wise.  Light came; how fares the sage? 
    There’s no abatement of the bigot’s rage. 
    Still as the wise man bled, he bleeds again. 
    Sophists prepared for Socrates the bowl—­
    And Christians drove the steel through Rousseau’s soul—­
    Rousseau who strove to render Christians—­men.

[11] Schiller lived to reverse, in the third period of his intellectual career, many of the opinions expressed in the first.  The sentiment conveyed in these lines on Rousseau is natural enough to the author of “The Robbers,” but certainly not to the poet of “Wallenstein” and the “Lay of the Bell.”  We confess we doubt the maturity of any mind that can find either a saint or a martyr in Jean Jacques.

* * * * *

FORTUNE AND WISDOM.

    In a quarrel with her lover
      To Wisdom Fortune flew;
    “I’ll all my hoards discover—­
      Be but my friend—­to you. 
    Like a mother I presented
      To one each fairest gift,
    Who still is discontented,
      And murmurs at my thrift. 
    Come, let’s be friends.  What say you? 
      Give up that weary plough,
    My treasures shall repay you,
      For both I have enow!”
    “Nay, see thy Friend betake him
      To death from grief for thee—­
    He dies if thou forsake him—­
      Thy gifts are nought to me!”

* * * * *

THE INFANTICIDE.

    1.

    Hark where the bells toll, chiming, dull and steady,
      The clock’s slow hand hath reach’d the appointed time. 
    Well, be it so—­prepare! my soul is ready,
      Companions of the grave—­the rest for crime! 
    Now take, O world! my last farewell—­receiving
      My parting kisses—­in these tears they dwell! 
    Sweet are thy poisons while we taste believing,
      Now we are quits—­heart-poisoner, fare-thee-well!

    2.

    Farewell, ye suns that once to joy invited,
      Changed for the mould beneath the funeral shade
    Farewell, farewell, thou rosy Time delighted,
      Luring to soft desire the careless maid. 
    Pale gossamers of gold, farewell, sweet-dreaming
      Fancies—­the children that an Eden bore! 
    Blossoms that died while dawn itself was gleaming,
      Opening in happy sunlight never more.