Blackwood's Magazine/Volume 146/Issue 885/The Partition of the Earth
The Partition of the Earth:
BY FRIEDRICH SCHILLER.
“There! Take the world!” Jove from his skyey throne To mortals cried: ‘“For you and for your heirs A heritage for ever—all your own: But see that each with each like brothers shares!"
Then straight to work all that had fingers went, All busy, all alert, both young and old; The farmer was on fruitful harvests bent, A-hunting sped the squire through wood and wold.
The merchant fills his stares from near and far The abbot culls the choicest oldest wine, The king on bridge and highway sets his bar, And says, “The tenth of everything is mine!
Long after all and each had ta’en his share The poet comes—he had been far away; He looks, and looks in vain, for everywhere Nought could he see, but owned a master’s sway.
“Woe's me! Shall I, of all thy sons the best, Shall I, then, be forgotten, I alone?”Thus his complaint he to great Jove addressed, And flung him down before the Thunderer’s throne.
“Not mine the blame,” the god replied, “I trow, If in the Land of Dreams thy life was led! When earth was being parcelled, where wert thou?" “I was with thee, with thee,” the poet said.
"Mine eye upon thy face in rapture gazed, Thy heaven’s full harmonies enchained mine ear: Forgive the soul that, by thy radiance dazed, Let go its hold upon the earthly sphere.”
“What now?” said Jove; “On earth I've nought to give, Field, forest, market, they no more are mine; But in my heaven if thou with me wouldst live, Come when thou wilt, a welcome shall be thine!”
Theodore Martin.