titude, and therefore It is tautological to talk of both. In this fifth line, therefore, we would retrench every word except the word "strength:" all the rest is "leather and prunella." So is "yet all is good" in the next line. And here, we again ask, why that unhappy qualification "yet?" If it has any significance at all, the word must be used for the purpose of disarming suspicion. The most favourable supposition we can make for the translator is, that when he called the works of God "mysterious all," it immediately occurred to him that they would be suspected of being not good. He therefore begs to assure us that, notwithstanding their mysteriousness, they are good; otherwise the word yet can have no meaning whatsoever. "They are mysterious," says he; yet, trust me, they are good." Now, if no such suspicions ever entered our minds, (as they certainly never did, being indeed quite at variance with the feeling inspired by the strain,) this attempt to allay them must be deemed a very superfluous undertaking, and one which greatly disfigures the character of the verses.
The same want of decision is still more apparent in the second stanza.—"Change and shift." Why say the same thing twice over, in a composition, the great beauty of which, in point of style, results from the severe parsimony of its words? But this is nothing to what takes place in the next two lines—"The vex'd sea foams"—that is the thing said once;—"waves leap and moan"—well, that is the same thing said twice, if not three times. Surely it won't be repeated: yes, here it is again—"and chide the rocks"—that is four times: there is an end of it now, we hope—no, it returns upon us again for the fifth time; they (the waves) do this "with insult hoarse." How intolerably this retards the fervour of the verse, which ought almost to make the brain whirl with its rapidity! We beg moreover, to remark, that the use of the words "chide" and "insult," in this passage, affords a striking illustration of what Wordsworth calls "the language of passion wrested from its proper use, and, from the mere circumstance of the composition being in metre," (this is the thing we were condemning a little while back,) applied upon an occasion which does not justify such expressions." Neither are these expressions in any degree justified by the original text; indeed, we should as soon expect to see bramble-berries growing on peach trees, as such vicious poetic diction sprouting from any of the shoots of Goethe's genius.
In the third stanza, the expression "heave round earth" appears to us to be a very sluggish and cumbrous mode of depicting the activity every where propagated, "when the stormy winds do blow." "With deadly ray," is very schoolboyish. In the two last lines, the reader will see the blunder we have already pointed out, committed: the words "thy servants," namely, understood in reference to themselves—the angels, and not in reference to the "thunder-peal" and "fast lightnings," as they ought to be.
We are anxious to exhibit specimens of all the translations of this ode; but as we can only afford space for a stanza a-piece, we shall yoke three mortals together, and make them chant in turn this strain of the immortals. The first archangel in our leash shall be
RAPHAEL SYME.
"The Sun, along the void of space,
Is sounding with its brother spheres,
And rolls on his predestined race
At thunder-speed: his aspect cheers
The angels, though none understand
What his mysterious music says.
The works of the Creator's hand
Are fresh as in creation's days.
THE HON. GABRIEL TALBOT.
Swift, swift beyond all thought, still flies
Earth, with its pomp, its orbit round;
Robed in the light of Paradise,
Altern with night's dread shades profound!
With its broad surge the foaming deep
To lash the sea-cliff's base appears;
While rock and billow onward sweep
In forced rotation, with the spheres!
MICHAEL BIRCH.
And storms and opposition raging,
From seas o'er land—from land o'er ocean,
In conflict mad engaging,
Build deep-laid barriers by their motion.
Now the destroying lightning's vivid flame
Foreruns the awful thunder's roar;
Yet, Lord! thy messengers proclaim thy name,
And the calm tenure of 'thy day' adore.
In the stanza sung by the first of our trio, the expression "along the void
