Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 564

Use well your time, so rapidly it flies;

Method will teach you time to win;

Hence, my young friend, I would advise,

With college logic to begin!

Then will your mind be so well braced,

In Spanish boots so tightly laced,

That on 'twill circumspectly creep,

Thought's beaten track securely keep,

Nor will it, ignis-fatuus like,

Into the path of error strike.

Then many a day they'll teach you how

The mind's spontaneous acts, till now

As eating and as drinking free,

Require a process;—one! two! three!

In truth the subtle web of thought

Is like the weaver's fabric wrought:

One treadle moves a thousand lines,

Swift dart the shuttles to and fro,

Unseen the threads together flow,

A thousand knots one stroke combines.

Then forward steps your sage to show,

And prove to you, it must be so;

The first being so, and so the second,

The third and fourth deduc'd we see;

And if there were no first and second,

Nor third nor fourth would ever be.

This, scholars of all countries prize—

Yet 'mong themselves no weavers rise.

He who would know and treat of aught alive,

Seeks first the living spirit thence to drive:

Then are the lifeless fragments in his hand,

There only fails, alas! the spirit-band.

This process, chemists name, in learned thesis,

Mocking themselves, Naturæ encheiresis.