RIDE TO THE HARTZ IN WINTER.
[The following explanation is necessary in order to make this ode in any way intelligible. The poet is supposed to leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode alternately describes, in a very fragmentary and peculiar way, the naturally happy disposition of the poet himself and the unhappiness of his friend; it pictures the wildness of the road and the dreariness of the prospect, which is relieved at one spot by the distant sight of a town, a very vague allusion to which is made in the third strophe; it recalls the hunting party on which his companions have gone: and, after an address to Love, concludes by a contrast between unexplored recesses of the highest peak of the Hartz and the metalliferous veins of its smaller brethren.]
Free as the hawk,
Which, on yon dark morning cloud-pile,
With soft spread pinion resting,
Looks out for prey,
Float my loose song!
Sure a God hath
Unto each his path
Fore-appointed,
Which the fortunate
Swift to happiest
Goal pursues:
But whom misfortune
Hath frozen to the heart,
He frets him vainly
Against the restraint of
The wire-woven cord, which
Soon shall the bitter scissors
Snap once for all.
