1 820-3 Song of the Bird. 1 3 1
Lo ! soon her glorious beauty she discovers : Soon droops : and sheds her leaves of faded hue : -Can this be She, the Flower, erewhile that drew Theheart of thousand maids, of thousand longing lovers ?
So fleeteth, in the fleeting of a day,
Of mortal life the green leaf, and the flower,
And not, though Spring return to every bower,
Buds forth again soft leaf, or blossom gay.
Gather the rose ! beneath the beauteous morning
Of this bright day, that soon will overcast.
O gather love's sweet rose, that yet doth last !
Love, in Youth's lovely prime ! ere aged love meet scorning.
The Field of Terror, a Tale ;
BY FREDERICK, BARON DE LA MOTTE FOUQUE. DEAR CHRISTOPHER,
I HAVE, for the sake of variety, chosen, instead of another dramatic criticism, to present your readers, in this Number, with one of the " Kleine lloinane" of my excellent friend, the Baron de La Motte Fouque. Nor have I selected one of his longer and more serious compositions under this title, but preferred one of the numerous (I might say numberless) fairy tales, which he has thrown off with the playful grace of a genuine master. To shadow out the various modifications and contentions of good and evil in this life, typified and impersonized by fairies, demons, &c. is a favourite system of the Baron. Hence his partiality to the superstitions of his country to which, by his inventive genius, and his moral and philosophic powers, he has given an interest and importance altogether new. That your readers may duly appreciate this little Tale, it may be per- mitted us to remind them, that among the mountains, in the north of Ger- many, there is one which has been said to possess, among other minerals, the magnet, in such abundance, that the labours of the husbandman were there found to be impracticable. As one fable naturally begets another, it followed, of course, that this difficulty was ascribed to the immediate agency of malig- nant demons. It remained however, for the genius of Fouque, to moralize this legend ; and probably, one ought not to rate the intelligence of any reader so low as to suppose that the moral of the following tale will not immediately be discovered. It may be considered, indeed, but a new modification of our own old chivalric legend of a knight, assailed by all the delusive horrors of witch- craft and sorcery, which vanish, one after another, before his invincible courage and constancy. (A legend, by the way, which has been so well given in the " Bridal of Triermain," and in vol. III. of Drake's " Literary Hours.") It will doubtless be perceived, that the adventures of Conrad are, in reality, no more than those of many a poor Farmer who, with courage and perseverance, struggles against the difficulties of his fortune and, at last, even from sterile fields, on which he is haunted by the demons of apprehension, indolence, and despondency, may, by contented industry, gain a competent livelihood, a comparative affluence. Your friend, R. P. G.
AT the foot of the Giant Mountain, (so their inheritance, had it not been that
called from its pre-eminent height), in it included one farm, called the FIELD
a fertile district of Silesia, there fell to OF TERROR ; which, of course, no one
be divided among several relations the was inclined to receive for his portion,
property of a rich commoner, who had Yet the surface of this field was
died without children, and whose va- adorned with blooming flowers, and a
rious farms were scattered about in variety of wild shrubs and underwood,
different quarters of this romantic betokening at once the fertility of the
country. soil, and the neglect of the husband-
For this purpose, they had assem- man. Many years indeed had passed
bled in a small inn of the head village, since any one had ventured there with
and would have very soon come to an a plough, nor had any seeds been
amicable agreement on the division of planted or sown but those which Na-
VOT..VHI. H
