Faust: a Tragedy, Translated from German

What I possess I see afar off lying,
And what I lost is real and undying.

Enter FAUST with the POODLE.

I leave behind me field and meadow
Veiled in the dusk of holy night,
Whose ominous and awful shadow
Awakes the better soul to light.
To sleep are lulled the wild desires,
The hand of passion lies at rest;
The love of man the bosom fires,
The love of God stirs up the breast.

Be quiet, poodle! what worrisome fiend hath possest thee,
Nosing and snuffling so round the door?
Go behind the stove there and rest thee,
There's my best pillow—what wouldst thou more?
As, out on the mountain-paths, frisking and leaping,
Thou, to amuse us, hast done thy best,
So now in return lie still in my keeping,
A quiet, contented, and welcome guest.

When, in our narrow chamber, nightly,
The friendly lamp begins to burn,
Then in the bosom thought beams brightly,
Homeward the heart will then return.
Reason once more bids passion ponder,

And this poor heart with rapture filling,
Reveals to me, by force divine,
Great Nature's energies around and through me thrilling?

strange crowd I sing

These later songs of mine, alas! will never
Sound in their ears to whom the first were sung!

They sit, with lifted brows, composed looks wearing, Expecting something that shall set them staring.

from the mist and haze of thought ye rise; The magic atmosphere, your train enwreathing, Through my thrilled bosom youthful bliss is breathing.

"No poetic translation," says Hayward's reviewer, already quoted, "can give the rhythm and rhyme of the original; it can only substitute the rhythm and rhyme of the translator." One might just as well say "no prose translation can give the sense and spirit of the original; it can only substitute the sense and spirit of the words and phrases of the translator's language;"

"The sacred and mysterious union of thought with verse, twin-born and immortally wedded from the moment of their common birth, can never be understood by those who desire verse translations of good poetry."

The street look down,