Hausschatz englischer Poesie

Whose lights are fled, Whose garland's dead, And all but he departed! Thus in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me, Sad Memory brings the light Of other days around me.

When 'midst the Gay I meet.

When 'midst the gay I meet

That blessed smile of thine,

Though still on me it turns most sweet, I scarce can call it mine:

But when to me alone

Your secret tears you show, Oh! then I feel those tears my own, And claim them as they flow. Then still with bright looks bless The gay, the cold, the free; Give smiles to those who love you less, But keep your tears for me.

The snow on Jura's steep

Can smile with many a beam,

Yet still in chains of coldness sleep,
How bright soe'er it seem.
But, when some deep-felt ray,

Whose touch is fire, appears,
Oh! then the smile is warm'd away,
And, melting, turns to tears.
Then still with bright looks bless
The gay, the cold, the free;
Give smiles to those who love you less,
But keep your tears for me.

Not so the faded form I prize
And love, because its bloom is gone;
The glory in those sainted eyes

Is all the grace her brow puts on.
And ne'er was beauty's dawn so bright,
So touching as that form's decay,
Which, like the altar's trembling light,
In holy lustre wastes away!

23.

*****

Oft, in the stilly Night.

Oft, in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,

Fond Memory brings the light

Of other days around me;

The smiles, the tears,

Of boyhood's years,

The words of love then spoken;

The eyes that shone,
Now dimm'd and gone,
The cheerful hearts now broken!
Thus, in the stilly night,

Ere Slumber's chain has bound me,
Sad Memory brings the light

Of other days around me.

When I remember all

The friends, so link'd together,
I've seen around me fall,

Like leaves in wintry weather;
I feel like one

Who treads alone
Some banquet-hall deserted,

Shelley.

Percy Bysshe Shelley, der älteste Sohn von Sir Thomas Shelley, Baronet von Castle-Garing, ward am 4. August 1792 zu Field-Place in Sussex geboren, studirte zu Eton und Oxford und ward von der Universität relegirt, wegen einer Schrift über die Nothwendigkeit des Atheismus, in Folge

deren ihn auch sein Vater verstiess. Er liess sich nun zu Marlow nieder und vermählte sich; der Kampf mit den Verhältnissen und eine unglückliche Ehe trieben ihn aber aus England fort. Seine Gattin starb 1817 vor Gram. Shelley ging nach Italien, kehrte darauf ihn sein Vaterland zurück, ward aber von seinen Verwandten verfolgt. Er verheirathete sich nun zum zweiten Male, nahm seinen Aufenthalt von Neuem in Italien, nicht weit von Livorno, und lebte literarischen Beschäftigungen. Eine freundlichere Zukunft lächelte ihm, da ertrank er auf einer Fahrt im Golf von Spezzia, am 8. Juli 1822. Lord Byron liess seine aufgefischte Leiche am Meergestade verbrennen und die Asche in Rom neben der Pyramide des Cestius beisetzen.

Shelley's erschienenen Werke - denn Vieles, das er hinterliess, ist nicht durch den Druck veröffentlicht worden bestehen aus: The Revolt of Islam, ein episches Gedicht, the Cenci, eine Tragödie, Prometheus Unbound, ein lyrisches Drama, Queen Mab, ein didactisches Gedicht (gegen dessen nochmalige Veröffentlichung er sich später erklärte), Alastor, ein didactisches Gedicht, Adonais, eine Elegie auf Keats, Hellas, ein lyrisches Drama und Poesieen gemischten Inhaltes. Ausführlicheres über sein Leben findet sich in: The Shelley Papers etc. By T. Medwin; London 1833.

Shelley besass ungemeine Kenntnisse fast in allen Fächern des menschlichen Wissens, dabei tiefen Scharfsinn und grossen Geschmack; aber das Schwanken seines Geistes und der Kampf seiner Philosophie mit der Poesie um die Oberherrschaft in den Leistungen des Dichters gestattete nicht, seinen Gedichten durch innere Ruhe die Vollendung, deren sie bedurften, zu geben. Das glühendste Gefühl für alles Edle und Grosse waltete in ihm; sein Atheismus war eigentlich nur eine Art von Pantheismus und wurde von seinen Feinden falsch verstanden und mit Unrecht verschrieen; aber der Wunsch, seinen Ansichten Bahn zu brechen und ihnen den Vorrang zu verschaffen, liess ihn oft zu weit gehen und er musste der Menge unzugänglich und unverständlich werden, da er selber nicht ruhig und klar genug war. Seine Richtung ist mehr elegisch zu nennen; sein Bestreben trieb ihn aber nur zu oft speculativen Meditationen zu, in welchen er sich zu sehr verwirrte.

The Cloud.

I bring fresh showers for thirsting flowers
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet birds every one,

When rock'd to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of the lashing hail,
And whiten the green plains under;
And then again I dissolve it in rain,
And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.
Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning, my pilot, sits,

In a cavern under is fetter'd the thunder,
It struggles and howls at fits;
Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea;
Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

| Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The Spirit he loves remains;

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,
Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning-star shines dead

As on the jag of a mountain crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea

beneath,

Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above,

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still as a brooding dove.

That orbed maiden, with white fire laden,
Whom mortals call the moon,
Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor,
By the midnight breezes strewn;

And wherever the beat of her unseen feet,
Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof,
The stars peep behind her and peer;

| And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

Like a swarm of golden bees,
When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent,

Till the calm rivers, lakes, and seas,
Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high,

Are each paved with the moon and these.

Where light is, chameleons change;

Where love is not, poets do:

Fame is love disguised if few Find either, never think it strange That poets range.

I bind the sun's throne with a burning zone,

And the moon's with a girdle of pearl; The volcanoes are dim, and the stars reel and

swim,
When the whirlwinds my banner unfurl.
From cape to cape, with a bridge-like shape,

Over a torrent sea,
Sunbeam proof, I hang like a roof,

The mountains its columns be.
The triumphal arch through which I march

With hurricane, fire, and snow,
When the powers of the air are chain'd to my

chair, Is the million-colour'd bow; The sphere-fire above its soft colours wove,

While the moist earth was laughing below.

Yet dare not stain with wealth or power

A poet's free and heavenly mind: If bright chameleons should devour

Any food but beams and wind, They would grow as earthly soon

As their brother lizards are.

Children of a súnnier star, Spirits from beyond the moon, 0, refuse the boon!

Mutability.
The flower that smiles to-day

To-morrow dies;
All that we wish to stay,

Tempts and then flies:
What is this world's delight?
Lightning that mocks the night,
Brief even as bright.

I am the daughter of earth and water,

And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;

I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain, when with never a stain,

The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex

gleams, Build up the blue dome of air, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,

And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from

the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again.

An Exhortation.

Chameleons feed on light and air;

Poets' food is love and fame: If in this wide world of care

Poets could but find the same With as little toil as they,

Would they ever change their hue

As the light chameleons do,
Suiting it to every ray
Twenty times a-day?

To Night. Swiftly walk over the western wave,

Spirit of Night! Out of the misty eastern cave, Where, all the long and lone daylight,

Thou wovest dreams of joy and fear, Which make thee terrible and dear,

Swift be thy flight!

Poets are on this cold earth,

As chameleons might be, Hidden from their early birth

In a cave beneath the sea,

Wrap thy form in a mantle grey,

The pale purple even
Star-inwrought!

Melts around thy flight;
Blind with thine hair the eyes of day,

Like a star of heaven, Kiss her until she be wearied out,

In the broad day-light Then wander o'er city, and sea, and land,

Thou art unseen,

but yet I hear thy shrill delight. Touch all with thine opiate wand, Come, long sought!

Keen as are the arrows

Of that silver sphere,
When I arose and saw the dawn,

Whose intense lamp narrows
I sighed for thee;

In the white dawn clear,
When light rode high, and the dew was gone, Until we hardly see, we feel that it is there.
And noon lay heavy on flower and tree,
And the weary day turned to his rest,

All the earth and air
Lingering like an unloved guest,

With thy voice is loud,
I sighed for thee!

As, when night is bare,

From one lonely cloud Thy brother, Death, came, and cried,

The moon rains out her beams, and heaven is Wouldst thou me?

overflowed. Thy sweet child, Sleep, thy filmy-eyed, Murmured like a noon-tide bee,

What thou art we know not; Shall I nestle near thy side ?

What is most like thee?
Wouldst thou me? And I replied,

From rainbow clouds there flow not
No, not thee!

Drops so bright to see,

As from thy presence showers a rain of melody. Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon!

Like a poet hidden Sleep will come when thou art fled;

In the light of thought, Of neither would I ask the boon

Singing hymns unbidden, I ask of thee, beloved Night;

Till the world is wrought Swift be thine approaching flight,

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not: Come soon, soon!

Like a high-born maiden

In a palace tower,
Soothing her love-laden

Soul in secret hour
With music sweet as love, which overflows her

bower:

To a Skylark.

Like a glow-worm golden

In a dell of dew,
Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Scattering unbeholden
Bird thou never wert,

Its aërial hue
That from heaven, or near it,

Among the flowers and grass, which screen it
Pourest thy full heart

from the view; In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Like a rose embowered
Higher still and higher,

In its own green leaves,
From the earth thou springest

By warm winds deflowered,
Like a cloud of fire;

Till the scent it gives
The blue deep thou wingest,

Makes faint with too much sweet these heavyAnd singing still dost soar, and soaring ever

winged thieves: singest.

Sound of vernal showers
In the golden lightning

On the twinkling grass,
Of the sunken sun,

Rain-awaken'd flowers,
O’er which clouds are bright'ning,

All that ever was
Thou dost float and run;

Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surLike an unbodied joy whose race is just begun.

pass.

near.

Teach us, sprite or bird,

We look before and after,
What sweet thoughts are thine:

And pine for what is not:
I have never heard

Our sincerest laughter
Praise of love or wine

With some pain is fraught;
That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest

thought.
Chorus Hymeneal,

Or triumphal chaunt,
Match'd with thine would be all

Yet if we could scorn
But an empty vaunt

Hate, and pride, and fear;
A thing wherein we feel there is some hidden want. 'If we were things born

Not to shed a tear,
What objects are the fountains

I know not how thy joy we ever should come
Of thy happy strain?
What fields, or waves, or mountains ?

What shapes of sky or plain?
What love of thine own kind? what ignorance Better than all measures

of pain?

Of delightful sound,
With thy clear keen joyance

Better than all treasures,
Languor cannot be:

That in books are found,
Shadow of annoyance

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the
Never came near thee:

ground!
Thou lovest; but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
Waking or asleep,

Teach me hålf the gladness
Thou of death must deem

That thy brain must know,
Things more true and deep

Such harmonious madness,
Than we mortals dream,

From my lips would flow, Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal The world should listen then, as I am listening stream?

now.

Coleridge.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge ward am 20. October 1772 zu Ottery St. Mary in Devonshire geboren, wo sein Vater als Geistlicher lebte. Er war das jüngste von eilf Kindern, erhielt seine Vorbildung im Christ's Hospital in London, wo er sich zum ersten Schüler aufschwang, dann studirte er zu Cambridge, verliess die Universität aber nach dreijährigem Aufenthalte und ging nach London, wo er als gemeiner Dragoner Dienste nahm. Seinen Freunden gelang es, ihm den Abschied auszuwirken; er lebte nun eine Zeit lang in Bristol und fasste hier den Entschluss, mit Lorell und Southey nach Amerika auszuwandern, Liebe machte aber diesen Plan scheitern; Coleridge vermählte sich und liess sich zu Nether-Stowey nieder, wo er sich seinen Unterhalt durch literarische Arbeiten erwarb. 1798 machte er eine Reise durch Deutschland, kehrte darauf im nächstfolgenden Jahr nach England zurück, lebte anfangs zu Keswick, dann in London, wo er die Morning-Post redigirte , ging darauf 1804 nach Malta, wo er das Amt eines Regierungssecretair verwaltete und liess sich dann von Neuem in seinem Vaterlande nieder, fortwährend literarisch und poetisch

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Hausschatz englischer Poesie: Auswahl aus den Werken der bedeutendsten ...