[Footnote 7: Though the Ideal images of youth forsake us--the Ideal still remains to the Poet.--Nay, it is his task and his companion; unlike the worldly fantasies of fortune--fame, and love--the fantasies the Ideal creates are imperishable. While, as the occupation of his life, it pays off the debt of time; as the exalter of life, it contributes to the building of eternity.] * * * * * THE IDEAL AND THE ACTUAL LIFE. The _first title_ of this Poem was "The Realm of Shadow." Perhaps in the whole range of German poetry there exists no poem which presents greater difficulties to the English translator. The chief object of the present inadequate version has been to render the sense intelligible as well as the words. The attempt stands in need of all the indulgence which the German scholar will readily allow that a much abler translator might reasonably require. 1 For ever fair, for ever calm and bright, Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light, For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice-- Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb, And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom The rosy days of Gods-- With Man, the choice, Timid and anxious, hesitates between The sense's pleasure and the soul's content; While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen, The beams of both are blent. 2 Seek'st thou on earth the life of Gods to share, Safe in the Realm of Death?--beware To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye; Content thyself with gazing on their glow-- Short are the joys Possession can bestow, And in Possession sweet Desire will die. 'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river-- She pluck'd the fruit of the unholy ground, And so--was Hell's for ever! 3 The weavers of the web--the Fates--but sway The matter and the things of clay; Safe from each change that Time to matter gives, Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day, The FORM, the ARCHETYPE,[8] serenely lives. Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing? Cast from thee, Earth, the bitter and the real, High from this cramp'd and dungeon being, spring Into the Realm of the Ideal! [Footnote 8: "Die Gestalt"--Form, the Platonic Archetype.] 4 Here, bathed, Perfection, in thy purest ray, Free from the clogs and taints of clay, Hovers divine the Archetypal Man! Like those dim phantom ghosts of life that gleam And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream, While yet they stand in fields Elysian, Ere to the flesh the Immortal ones descend-- If doubtful ever in the Actual life, Each contest--here a victory crowns the end Of every nobler strife. 5