Page:The Poets and Poetry of the West.djvu/241

NOBLE BUTLER. Noble Butler, who has an enviable reputation as a teacher, and as an author of school books, and who ranks high among scholars in the West, was born in a pioneer cabin on the river Monongahela, twenty miles above Pittsburg, on the seventeenth day of July, 1811. His father, a farmer, was a native of Maryland, but an ancestor of the same name settled in Pennsylvania, in the time of William Penn. Noble, when a young man, became a teacher in Indiana, and he is a graduate of, and was for some- time a professor in, Hanover College in that State. In 1836 he was married at South Hanover, to Lucinda Harvey, a native of Kentucky. For many years Mr. Butler has been the principal of an eminently successful classical school in Louisville, Kentucky. He has written largely for magazines and newspapers, but not frequently in verse. In a note to the editor he says : " The Muse seldom visits me, and never takes off' her shawl and bonnet. She refuses most posi- tively to go with me to the school-room." She has, however, made him memorable visits, and was certainly on good terms with him when she inspired " The Blue-bird," which, we think, is one of the sweetest poems of its class in our literature. Mr. Butler has distinguished himself as a translator of German poetry, which has attracted the attention of celebrated English writers. He has translated Schiller's Poem " The Longing," with quite as much grace and with more exactness, than was imparted to it in a translation by Bulwer; and it is justly claimed for him that his rendering of the song of "■ Thekla " in Schiller's " Piccolomini," is more faithful if not more beautiful than the generally accepted translation by Coleridge. In a note, Cole- ridge acknowledges that it was not in his power to translate the song with literal fidel- ity, preserving the Alcaic movement, and he therefore gives a literal prose translation as follows : The oak-forest bellows, the clouds gather, the damsel walks to and fro on the green of the shore ; the wave breaks with might, with might, and she sings out into the dark night, her eye dis- colored with weeping : the heart is dead, the world is empty, and further gives it nothing more to the wish. Thou Holy One, call thy child home. I have enjoyed the happiness of this world, I have lived and have loved. Mr. Butler's translation is at least free from the faults which make that by Cole- ridge unacceptable to scholars. It is in these words : The dark clouds rush ! hear the forest roar ! The maiden wanders along the shore. The waves are breaking with might, with might ! And the maiden sings out to the mui'ky night, Her tear-troubled eye upward roving : My heart is dead, the world is a void ; There is nothing in it to be enjoyed. Father, call home thy child to thee ; For all the bliss that on earth can be I have had in living and loving. (225) 15