Friedrich Schiller Poems

Could I from this valley drear,
Where the mist hangs heavily,
Soar to some more blissful sphere,
Ah! how happy should I be!
...

Full many a shining wit one sees,
With tongue on all things well conversing;
The what can charm, the what can please,
In every nice detail rehearsing.
...

Ye in the age gone by,
Who ruled the world--a world how lovely then!--
And guided still the steps of happy men
In the light leading-strings of careless joy!
...

Fast, in its prison-walls of earth,
Awaits the mould of baked clay.
Up, comrades, up, and aid the birth
The bell that shall be born to-day!
...

Man of virtue has need; -into life with boldness he plunges,
Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife;
...

See how, like lightest waves at play, the airy dancers fleet;
And scarcely feels the floor the wings of those harmonious feet.
Ob, are they flying shadows from their native forms set free?
Or phantoms in the fairy ring that summer moonbeams see?
...