Translations. -The Philosophers. (From Schiller.)

The principle whence everything      To life and shape ascended--     The pulley whereon Zeus the ring     Of Earth, which else in sherds would spring,      Has carefully suspended--     To genius I yield him a claim     Who fathoms for me what its name,      Save I withdraw its curtain:      It is--ten is not thirteen.     That snow makes cold, that fire burns,      That man on two feet goeth,     That in the heavens the sun sojourns--     This much the man who logic spurns      Through his own senses knoweth;     But metaphysics who has got,     Knows he that burneth, freezeth not;      Knows 'tis the moist that wetteth,      And 'tis the rough that fretteth.     Great Homer sings his epic high;      The hero fronts his dangers;     The brave his duty still doth ply--     And did it while, I won't deny,      Philosophers were strangers:     But grant by heart and brain achiev'd     What Locke and Des Cartes ne'er conceiv'd--      By them yet, as behovd,      It possible was provd.     Strength for the Right is counted still;      Bold laughs the strong hyena;     Who rule not, servants' parts must fill;     It goes quite tolerably ill      Upon this world's arena;     But how it would be, if the plan     Of the universe now first began,      In many a moral system      All men may read who list 'em.     "Man needs with man must linked be      To reach the goal of growing;     In the whole only worketh he;     Many drops go to make the sea;      Much water sets mills going.     Then with the wild wolves do not stand,     But knit the state's enduring band:"      From doctor's chair thus, tranquil,      Herr Pufendorf and swan-quill.     But since to all, what doctors say      Flies not as soon as spoken,     Nature will use her mother-way,     See that her chain fly not in tway,      The circle be not broken:     Meantime, until the world's great round     Philosophy in one hath bound,      She keeps it on the move, sir,      By hunger and by love, sir.