The Playing Infant

Friedrich Schiller 1759 (Marbach am Neckar) – 1805 (Weimar)



Play on thy mother's bosom, babe, for in that holy isle
    The error cannot find thee yet, the grieving, nor the guile;
    Held in thy mother's arms above life's dark and troubled wave,
    Thou lookest with thy fearless smile upon the floating grave.
    Play, loveliest innocence!--Thee yet Arcadia circles round,
    A charmed power for thee has set the lists of fairy ground;
    Each gleesome impulse Nature now can sanction and befriend,
    Nor to that willing heart as yet the duty and the end.
    Play, for the haggard labor soon will come to seize its prey.
    Alas! when duty grows thy law, enjoyment fades away!

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

33 sec read
46

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBCCDDEE
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 626
Words 107
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 10

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet philosopher historian and playwright During the last seventeen years of his life Schiller struck up a productive if complicated friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe with whom he frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics and encouraged Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches this relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism They also worked together on Die Xenien The Xenies a collection of short but harshly satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe verbally attacked those persons they perceived to be enemies of their aesthetic agenda. more…

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