C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Worth of Women
By Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805)
H
To garden the earth with the roses of Heaven!
All blessed, she linketh the Loves in their choir,—
In the veil of her Graces her beauty concealing,
She tends on each altar that’s hallowed to Feeling,
And keeps ever living the fire!
Man’s strong spirit wildly sweeps,
With each hasty impulse veering,
Down to Passion’s troubled deeps.
And his heart, contented never,
Greeds to grapple with the far,
Chasing his own dream forever
On through many a distant Star!
Lureth back at her beck that wild truant again
By the spell of her presence beguiled;
In the home of the Mother her modest abode,
And modest the manners by Nature bestowed
On Nature’s most exquisite child.
Foe to foe, the angry strife,—
Man the Wild One, never resting,
Roams along the troubled life:
What he planneth, still pursuing;
Vainly as the hydra bleeds,
Crest the severed crest renewing,
Wish to withered wish succeeds.
And seeks from the Moment to gather the roses,
Whose sweets to her culture belong.
Ah! richer than he, though his soul reigneth o’er
The mighty dominion of Genius and Lore,
And the infinite Circle of Song.
Man’s cold bosom beats alone:
Heart with heart divinely blending
In the love that Gods have known.
Soul’s sweet interchange of feeling,
Melting tears,—he never knows;
Each hard sense the hard one steeling,
Arms against a world of foes.
If wooed by the Zephyr, to music will quiver,
Is Woman to Hope and to Fear;
Ah, tender one! still at the shadow of grieving,
How quiver the chords—how thy bosom is heaving—
How trembles thy glance through the tear!
Might to right the Statute gave;
Laws are in the Scythian’s sabre;
Where the Mede reigned, see the Slave!
Peace and Meekness grimly routing,
Prowls the War lust, rude and wild;
Eris rages, hoarsely shouting,
Where the vanished Graces smiled.
Of the mild realm of manners the sceptre she swayeth;
She lulls, as she looks from above,
The Discord whose hell for its victims is gaping,
And blending awhile the forever-escaping,
Whispers Hate to the Image of Love.