The Ideal And The Actual Life Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AABCCBDEDE FFGHHGEIEIJJKJJKLMLM JJNOONEPEP QQORROSTST PPOUUOVWVW EEEJJEXYXY EEREERZA2ZA2 HHTB2B2TENEN C2D2UEEUTETE E2F2G2NNG2EH2EH2 PPNI2I2NEGEQ UUNRRNENEN EEEJJEJ2NJ2N JJJ2LLJ2OTOTForever fair forever calm and bright | A |
Life flies on plumage zephyr light | A |
For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice | B |
Moons wane and races wither to the tomb | C |
And 'mid the universal ruin bloom | C |
The rosy days of Gods With man the choice | B |
Timid and anxious hesitates between | D |
The sense's pleasure and the soul's content | E |
While on celestial brows aloft and sheen | D |
The beams of both are blent | E |
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Seekest thou on earth the life of gods to share | F |
Safe in the realm of death beware | F |
To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye | G |
Content thyself with gazing on their glow | H |
Short are the joys possession can bestow | H |
And in possession sweet desire will die | G |
'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound | E |
Thy daughter Ceres to the Stygian river | I |
She plucked the fruit of the unholy ground | E |
And so was hell's forever | I |
The weavers of the web the fates but sway | J |
The matter and the things of clay | J |
Safe from change that time to matter gives | K |
Nature's blest playmate free at will to stray | J |
With gods a god amidst the fields of day | J |
The form the archetype serenely lives | K |
Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing | L |
Cast from thee earth the bitter and the real | M |
High from this cramped and dungeon being spring | L |
Into the realm of the ideal | M |
- | |
Here bathed perfection in thy purest ray | J |
Free from the clogs and taints of clay | J |
Hovers divine the archetypal man | N |
Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam | O |
And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream | O |
Fair as it stands in fields Elysian | N |
Ere down to flesh the immortal doth descend | E |
If doubtful ever in the actual life | P |
Each contest here a victory crowns the end | E |
Of every nobler strife | P |
- | |
Not from the strife itself to set thee free | Q |
But more to nerve doth victory | Q |
Wave her rich garland from the ideal clime | O |
Whate'er thy wish the earth has no repose | R |
Life still must drag thee onward as it flows | R |
Whirling thee down the dancing surge of time | O |
But when the courage sinks beneath the dull | S |
Sense of its narrow limits on the soul | T |
Bright from the hill tops of the beautiful | S |
Bursts the attained goal | T |
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If worth thy while the glory and the strife | P |
Which fire the lists of actual life | P |
The ardent rush to fortune or to fame | O |
In the hot field where strength and valor are | U |
And rolls the whirling thunder of the car | U |
And the world breathless eyes the glorious game | O |
Then dare and strive the prize can but belong | V |
To him whose valor o'er his tribe prevails | W |
In life the victory only crowns the strong | V |
He who is feeble fails | W |
- | |
But life whose source by crags around it piled | E |
Chafed while confined foams fierce and wild | E |
Glides soft and smooth when once its streams expand | E |
When its waves glassing in their silver play | J |
Aurora blent with Hesper's milder ray | J |
Gain the still beautiful that shadow land | E |
Here contest grows but interchange of love | X |
All curb is but the bondage of the grace | Y |
Gone is each foe peace folds her wings above | X |
Her native dwelling place | Y |
- | |
When through dead stone to breathe a soul of light | E |
With the dull matter to unite | E |
The kindling genius some great sculptor glows | R |
Behold him straining every nerve intent | E |
Behold how o'er the subject element | E |
The stately thought its march laborious goes | R |
For never save to toil untiring spoke | Z |
The unwilling truth from her mysterious well | A2 |
The statue only to the chisel's stroke | Z |
Wakes from its marble cell | A2 |
- | |
But onward to the sphere of beauty go | H |
Onward O child of art and lo | H |
Out of the matter which thy pains control | T |
The statue springs not as with labor wrung | B2 |
From the hard block but as from nothing sprung | B2 |
Airy and light the offspring of the soul | T |
The pangs the cares the weary toils it cost | E |
Leave not a trace when once the work is done | N |
The Artist's human frailty merged and lost | E |
In art's great victory won | N |
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If human sin confronts the rigid law | C2 |
Of perfect truth and virtue awe | D2 |
Seizes and saddens thee to see how far | U |
Beyond thy reach perfection if we test | E |
By the ideal of the good the best | E |
How mean our efforts and our actions are | U |
This space between the ideal of man's soul | T |
And man's achievement who hath ever past | E |
An ocean spreads between us and that goal | T |
Where anchor ne'er was cast | E |
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But fly the boundary of the senses live | E2 |
The ideal life free thought can give | F2 |
And lo the gulf shall vanish and the chill | G2 |
Of the soul's impotent despair be gone | N |
And with divinity thou sharest the throne | N |
Let but divinity become thy will | G2 |
Scorn not the law permit its iron band | E |
The sense it cannot chain the soul to thrall | H2 |
Let man no more the will of Jove withstand | E |
And Jove the bolt lets fall | H2 |
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If in the woes of actual human life | P |
If thou could'st see the serpent strife | P |
Which the Greek art has made divine in stone | N |
Could'st see the writhing limbs the livid cheek | I2 |
Note every pang and hearken every shriek | I2 |
Of some despairing lost Laocoon | N |
The human nature would thyself subdue | E |
To share the human woe before thine eye | G |
Thy cheek would pale and all thy soul be true | E |
To man's great sympathy | Q |
- | |
But in the ideal realm aloof and far | U |
Where the calm art's pure dwellers are | U |
Lo the Laocoon writhes but does not groan | N |
Here no sharp grief the high emotion knows | R |
Here suffering's self is made divine and shows | R |
The brave resolve of the firm soul alone | N |
Here lovely as the rainbow on the dew | E |
Of the spent thunder cloud to art is given | N |
Gleaming through grief's dark veil the peaceful blue | E |
Of the sweet moral heaven | N |
- | |
So in the glorious parable behold | E |
How bowed to mortal bonds of old | E |
Life's dreary path divine Alcides trod | E |
The hydra and the lion were his prey | J |
And to restore the friend he loved to day | J |
He went undaunted to the black browed god | E |
And all the torments and the labors sore | J2 |
Wroth Juno sent the meek majestic one | N |
With patient spirit and unquailing bore | J2 |
Until the course was run | N |
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Until the god cast down his garb of clay | J |
And rent in hallowing flame away | J |
The mortal part from the divine to soar | J2 |
To the empyreal air Behold him spring | L |
Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing | L |
And the dull matter that confined before | J2 |
Sinks downward downward downward as a dream | O |
Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul | T |
And smiling Hebe from the ambrosial stream | O |
Fills for a god the bowl | T |
Friedrich Schiller
(1)
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