San Antonio daily light. [volume] (San Antonio, Tex.) 1886-1907, 1890-07-19
Yhs Daily Eight.
SATURDAY, JULY 10, 1890.
Single SATURDAYS.


gestive of leisure, it invites one to sit
in the companionship ola cool breeze,
and improve ones mind.
There are new books upon mine,
which tell of the worlds restless pro-
gress, and old books which have. COM
forted me for years.
1 sit down upon this Saturday
morning, and almost as children play
"Bliud Mans Buff" lift mp the first
volume my hand touches.
1t is q collection of German poetry,
q garland OF real Teutonic music,
which to those that understand it, Is
the sweetest of all. My eyes fall up
on the name of Goethe, and straight
way am waited away from tropical
heat.
I see the princely court at Weimar,
and follow the master through the
cool scenes of his great career. 1t is
too warm to read any thing very
heavy, but his minor songs are before
me with all their immortal simplicity.
There is friend in the room, and
begin to translate the "King i'm
Thule" put it in bald but correct
English prose and then wonder why
this person will not enthuse!
"How could anybody make poem
about such stuff? There's nothing in
it," cries this genius of the practical.
remember the tortured rymes and
meter which have mutilated it as
rule in translation. / come to rash
conclusion. Poetry must be rendered
into poetry. German cannot be SO
translated as to be sung to the old
familiar tunes, but it can be trans
posed into ineligible English verse.
1 take up pencil and paper and
throw my mind back to the heather
Kingdoms which lined the North and
Baltic seas. see that dim peninsu-
la they called Thule, and the heroic
barbarian monarch with the "Bech-
or" or drinking cup.
I wonder idly how many quarts it
held.
At last read aloud the following,
the result of my own translatiOn:
There was king in ancient Thule,
Beside the distant northern sea,
He held a firm, but tranquil rule
And faithful unto death was he.
His queen upon her dying bed,
Gave him a goblet, quaint and old,
She babe him when the wine was red,
TO drain no other cup of gold.
The time flew by in currents fair,
He lived the years he had to live,
Then gave his kingdom to his heir
The cup alone he did not give.
He made last imperial feast,
For knights and earls of high
degree,
And babe them come from first to
least,
Unto the castle by the sea.
The ancient warrior Strengthened up
And drank toast with Hfe's last
glow,
Then threw the sacred cherished cup
Into the rolling waves below.
He watched it sink with bated breath.
The ocean waters closing DER,
His weary eyelids dropped in death
He never drank bumper more.
The paper touched Haggard's new
novel, Beatrice" and drew me back
at bound to the present.
Mr.. Haggard's last work is not a
moral affair, no one supposes he in
tended it to he so. Would he not,
however, SHIT d Ter himself at the les
son it gives were it presented to him
stripped of all romantic halo.
1t is positively unrighteous and
teaches the distressing lesson that it
Is bad plan to drown ones self for
love of married man-but a highly
correct thing to adore him and wait
for his wife To die
1t argues upon a line of false prem
ises and can do only harm. The ex-
travagance of "Shen was Innocent,
for man living thousand years
can have no parallel in fact, but the
extravaganza of Beatrice Is wicked.
There are enough badly assorted
welded couples already without Mr..
Haggard's lending them his assist
ance as to how to get along worse
Last of all read few words from
little volume bound in white, Henry
Drummond's sermon, called "The
Greatest Thing in the World" 1t
touches on practical Christianity with
a strong yet tender hand. 1t says,
Hold human things in their just
proportions"
One feels like doing it up in
brown paper and sending it over the
see to Mr.. Rider Haggard.
REBA GREGORY PRELAT.
San Antonio, Texas.