I
In its armchair,stupid and dumb,The German public watches it come.
Hither and thither rumbles the storm,Heaven clouds over,more dark and forlorn.
Lightning hisses,snakes out of sight,Feelings remain inviolate.
But when the sun comes out in greeting,The winds soft sighing,the storm abating,It stirs itself,makes a fuss at last,And writes a book:The Commotion Is Past;
Is seized with an urge for fantasy,Would plumb the whole thing thoroughly;
Believes it's extremely wrong of Heaven To play such jokes,though brilliant even,It should the All systematically treat;
First rub the head and then the feet;
Just like a baby it carries on Looking for things which are dead and gone;
Should get the Present in proper perspective,Let Heaven and Earth go their ways respective;
They've followed their courses as before,And the wave laps quiet on the rocky shore.
II
ON HEGEL
1
Since I have found the Highest of things and the Depths of them also,Rude am I as a God,cloaked by the dark like a God.
Long have I searched and sailed on Thought's deep billowing ocean ;
There I found me the Word:now I hold on to it fast.
2
Words I teach all mixed up into a devilish muddle,Thus,anyone may think just what he chooses to think;
Never,at least,is he hemmed in by strict limitations.
Bubbling out of the flood,plummeting down from the cliff,So are his Beloved's words and thoughts that the Poet devises;
He understands what he thinks,freely invents what he feels.
Thus,each may for himself suck wisdom's nourishing nectar;
Now you know all,since I've said plenty of nothing to you!
3
Kant and Fichte soar to heavens blue Seeking for some distant land,I but seek to grasp profound and true That whichin the street I find.
4
Forgive us epigrammatists For singing songs with nasty twists.
In Hegel we're all so completely submerged,But with his Aesthetics we've yet to be
purged.
III
The Germans once actually stirred their stumps,With a People's Victory turned up trumps.
And when all that was over and done,On every corner,everyone Read:"Wonderful things are in store for you Three legs for all instead of two!"
This shook them badly,and in due course They were all smitten by deep remorse.
"Too much has happened at once,it's plain.
We'll have to behave ourselves again.
The rest it were better to print and bind,And buyers will not be hard to find."
IV
Pull down the stars for them at night,They burn too pale or far too bright.
The sun's rays either scorch the eye Or shine from much too far away.
V
Of Schiller there's reason to complain,Who couldn't more humanly entertain.
Endowed with an elevating mind,He didn't stick to the daily grind.
He played with Thunder and Lightning much,But totally lacked the common touch.
VI
But Goethe's taste was too nicely ordered;
He'd rather see Venus than something sordid.
Although he grasped things,as one should,from below,It was for the Highest he made us go.
He wanted to make things so sublime That Soulgrip evaded him most of the time.
Schiller was surely nearer the mark,You can read his ideas in letters stark.
His thoughts are there in black and white,Though it's hard to fathom the meaning aright.
