Friedrich Schiller

Friedrich Schiller was born at Marbach in Württemberg and became, with Goethe, one of the two great figures of Weimar Classicism. He wrote the plays The Robbers, Wallenstein and William Tell, as well as ballads and philosophical poems, among them the Ode to Joy and The Song of the Bell.

James Clarence Mangan (1803–1849) translated this poet in his German Anthology (1845); the poems here are his English versions, as reprinted in Poems, ed. John Mitchel (New York, 1859).