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The Essential Goethe
By Johann Wolfgang von GOETHE, Matthew Bell PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2016 Princeton University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4008-7425-5
CHAPTER 1
Selected Poems
WELCOME AND FAREWELL
(1771; 1789)
My heart beat fast, a horse! away!
Quicker than thought I am astride,
Earth now lulled by end of day,
Night hovering on the mountainside.
A robe of mist around him flung,
The oak a towering giant stood,
A hundred eyes of jet had sprung
From darkness in the bushy wood.
Atop a hill of cloud the moon
Shed piteous glimmers through the mist,
Softly the wind took flight, and soon
With horrible wings around me hissed.
Night made a thousand ghouls respire,
Of what I felt, a thousandth part —
My mind, what a consuming fire!
What a glow was in my heart!
You I saw, your look replied,
Your sweet felicity, my own,
My heart was with you, at your side,
I breathed for you, for you alone.
A blush was there, as if your face
A rosy hue of Spring had caught,
For me — ye gods! — this tenderness!
I hoped, and I deserved it not.
Yet soon the morning sun was there,
My heart, ah, shrank as leave I took:
How rapturous your kisses were,
What anguish then was in your look!
I left, you stood with downcast eyes,
In tears you saw me riding off:
Yet, to be loved, what happiness!
What happiness, ye gods, to love!
ROSEBUD IN THE HEATHER
(1771)
Urchin saw a rose — a dear
Rosebud in the heather.
Fresh as dawn and morning-clear;
Ran up quick and stooped to peer,
Took his fill of pleasure,
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Rosebud in the heather.
Urchin blurts: "I'll pick you, though,
Rosebud in the heather!"
Rosebud: "Then I'll stick you so
That there's no forgetting, no!
I'll not stand it, ever!"
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Rosebud in the heather.
But the wild young fellow's torn
Rosebud from the heather.
Rose, she pricks him with her thorn;
Should she plead, or cry forlorn?
Makes no difference whether.
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Rosebud in the heather.
PROMETHEUS
(1773)
Cover your heaven, Zeus,
With cloudy vapors
And like a boy
Beheading thistles
Practice on oaks and mountain peaks —
Still you must leave
My earth intact
And my small hovel, which you did not build,
And this my hearth
Whose glowing heat
You envy me.
I know of nothing more wretched
Under the sun than you gods!
Meagerly you nourish
Your majesty
On dues of sacrifice
And breath of prayer
And would suffer want
But for children and beggars,
Poor hopeful fools.
Once too, a child,
Not knowing where to turn,
I raised bewildered eyes
Up to the sun, as if above there were
An ear to hear my complaint,
A heart like mine
To take pity on the oppressed.
Who helped me
Against the Titans' arrogance?
Who rescued me from death,
From slavery?
Did not my holy and glowing heart,
Unaided, accomplish all?
And did it not, young and good,
Cheated, glow thankfulness
For its safety to him, to the sleeper above?
I pay homage to you? For what?
Have you ever relieved
The burdened man's anguish?
Have you ever assuaged
The frightened man's tears?
Was it not omnipotent Time
That forged me into manhood,
And eternal Fate,
My masters and yours?
Or did you think perhaps
That I should hate this life,
Flee into deserts
Because not all
The blossoms of dream grew ripe?
Here I sit, forming men
In my image,
A race to resemble me:
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy, to be glad —
And never to heed you,
Like me!
IN COURT
(c. 1774–75)
Who gave it me, I shall not tell,
The child I've got in me;
Call me a whore, if you like, and spit:
I'm an honest woman, see?
He's good and kind, I'll not say who,
My sweetheart that I wed,
A chain of gold on his neck he wears
And a straw hat on his head.
Chuckle and scorn to your heart's content,
I'll take the scorn from you;
I know him well, he knows me well,
God knows about us, too.
Lay off me, folks, you, reverend,
You, officer of the laws!
It is my child, it stays my child,
And it's no concern of yours.
ON THE LAKE
(1775)
And fresh nourishment, new blood
I suck from a world so free;
Nature, how gracious and how good,
Her breast she gives to me.
The ripples buoying up our boat
Keep rhythm to the oars,
And mountains up to heaven float
In cloud to meet our course.
Eyes, my eyes, why abject now?
Golden dreams, are you returning?
Dream, though gold, away with you:
Life is here and loving too.
Over the ripples twinkling
Star on hovering star,
Soft mists drink the circled
Towering world afar;
Dawn wind fans the shaded
Inlet with its wing,
And in the water mirrored
The fruit is ripening.
AUTUMN FEELING
(1775)
More fatly greening climb
The trellis, you, vine leaf
Up to my window!
Gush, denser, berries
Twin, and ripen
Shining fuller, faster!
Last gaze of sun
Broods you, maternal;
Of tender sky the fruiting
Fullness wafts around you;
Cooled you are, by the moon
Magic, a friendly breath,
And from these eyes,
Of ever quickening Love, ah,
Upon you falls a dew, the tumid
Brimming tears.
WANDERER'S NIGHT SONG
(1776)
Thou that from the heavens art,
Every pain and sorrow stillest,
And the doubly wretched heart
Doubly with refreshment fillest,
I am weary with contending!
Why this rapture and unrest?
Peace descending
Come, ah, come into my breast!
ANOTHER NIGHT SONG
(1780)
O'er all the hill-tops
Is quiet now,
In all the tree-tops
Hearest thou
Hardly a breath;
The birds are asleep in the trees:
Wait, soon like these
Thou, too, shalt rest.
(Longfellow)
Over mountains yonder,
A stillness;
Scarce any breath, you wonder,
Touches
The tops of all the trees.
No forest birds now sing;
A moment, waiting —
Then take, you too, your ease.
(CM)
TO CHARLOTTE VON STEIN
(1776)
Why confer on us the piercing vision:
All tomorrow vivid in our gaze?
Not a chance to build on love's illusion?
Not a glimmer of idyllic days?
Why confer on us, O fate, the feeling
Each can plumb the other's very heart?
Always, though in storms of passion reeling,
See precisely what a course we chart?
Look at all those many thousands drudging
(Knowing even their own nature less
Than we know each other), thousands trudging,
In the dark about their own distress;
Drunk on exultation, when they're treated
Suddenly to joy's magenta dawn.
Only we unlucky lovers, cheated
Of all mutual comfort, have forgone
This: to be in love, not understanding;
This: to see the other as he's not;
Off in gaudy dreams go hand-in-handing,
In appalling dreams turn cold and hot.
Happy man, a fleeting dream engages!
Happy man, no premonitions numb!
We however — ! All our looks and touches
Reaffirm our fear of days to come.
Tell me, what's our destiny preparing?
Tell me, how we're bound in such a knot?
From an old existence we were sharing?
You're the wife, the sister I forgot?
Knew me then completely, every feature,
How each nerve responded and rang true;
Read me in a single glance — a nature
Others search bewildered for a clue.
To that heated blood, a cool transfusion;
To that crazy runaway, a rein;
In your clasp, what Edens of seclusion
Nursed to health that fellow, heart and brain.
Held him tightly, lightly, as enchanted;
Spirited the round of days away.
Where's a joy like this? — you'd think transplanted
At your feet the flushing lover lay;
Lay and felt his heart, against you, lighten;
Felt your eye approving; but he's good!
Felt his murky senses clear and brighten;
On his raging blood, a quietude.
Now, of all that was, about him hovers
Just a haze of memory, hardly there.
Still the ancient truth avails: we're lovers —
Though our new condition's a despair.
Only half a mind for earth. Around us
Twilight thickens on the brightest day.
Yet we're still in luck: the fates that hound us
Couldn't wish our love away.
TO THE MOON
(1777; THIS SECOND VERSION PUBLISHED 1789)
Flooding with a brilliant mist
Valley, bush and tree,
You release me. Oh for once
Heart and soul I'm free!
Easy on the region round
Goes your wider gaze,
Like a friend's indulgent eye
Measuring my days.
Every echo from the past,
Glum or gaudy mood,
Haunts me — weighing bliss and pain
In the solitude.
River, flow and flow away;
Pleasure's dead to me:
Gone the laughing kisses, gone
Lips and loyalty.
All in my possession once!
Such a treasure yet
Any man would pitch in pain
Rather than forget.
Water, rush along the pass,
Never lag at ease;
Rush, and rustle to my song
Changing melodies.
How in dark December you
Roll amok in flood;
Curling, in the gala May,
Under branch and bud.
Happy man, that rancor-free
Shows the world his door;
One companion by — and both
In a glow before
Something never guessed by men
Or rejected quite:
Which, in mazes of the breast,
Wanders in the night.
A WINTER JOURNEY IN THE HARZ
(1777)
As the buzzard aloft
On heavy daybreak cloud
With easy pinion rests
Searching for prey,
May my song hover.
For a god has
Duly to each
His path prefixed,
And the fortunate man
Runs fast and joyfully
To his journey's end;
But he whose heart
Misfortune constricted
Struggles in vain
To break from the bonds
Of the brazen thread
Which the shears, so bitter still,
Cut once alone.
Into grisly thickets
The rough beasts run,
And with the sparrows
The rich long since have
Sunk in their swamps.
Easy it is to follow that car
Which Fortune steers,
Like the leisurely troop that rides
The fine highroads
Behind the array of the Prince.
But who is it stands aloof?
His path is lost in the brake,
Behind him the shrubs
Close and he's gone,
Grass grows straight again,
The emptiness swallows him.
O who shall heal his agony then
In whom each balm turned poison,
Who drank hatred of man
From the very fullness of love?
First held now holding in contempt.
In secret he consumes
His own particular good
In selfhood unsated.
If in your book of songs
Father of love, there sounds
One note his ear can hear,
Refresh with it then his heart!
Open his clouded gaze
To the thousand fountainheads
About him as he thirsts
In the desert!
You who give joys that are manifold,
To each his overflowing share,
Bless the companions that hunt
On the spoor of the beasts
With young exuberance
Of glad desire to kill,
Tardy avengers of outrage
For so long repelled in vain
By the cudgeling countryman.
But hide the solitary man
In your sheer gold cloud!
Till roses flower again
Surround with winter-green
The moistened hair,
O love, of your poet!
With your lantern glowing
You light his way
Over the fords by night,
On impassable tracks
Through the void countryside;
With daybreak thousand-hued
Into his heart you laugh;
With the mordant storm
You bear him aloft;
Winter streams plunge from the crag
Into his songs,
And his altar of sweetest thanks
Is the snow-hung brow
Of the terrible peak
People in their imaginings crowned
With spirit dances.
You stand with heart unplumbed
Mysteriously revealed
Above the marveling world
And you look from clouds
On the kingdoms and magnificence
Which from your brothers' veins beside you
With streams you water.
SONG OF THE SPIR ITS OVER THE WATERS
(1779)
The soul of man,
It is like water:
It comes from heaven,
It mounts to heaven,
And earthward again
Descends
Eternally changing.
If the pure jet
Streams from the high
Vertical rockface,
A powdering spray,
A wave of cloud
Splashes the smooth rock
And gathered lightly
Like a veil it rolls
Murmuring onward
To depths yonder.
If cliffs loom up
To stem its fall,
It foams petulant
Step by step
To the abyss.
Along a level bed
Through the glen it slips,
In the lake unruffled
All the clustering stars
Turn their gaze.
Wind woos
The wave like a lover,
Wind churns from the ground up
Foaming billows.
Soul of man,
How like the water you are!
Fate of man,
How like the wind.
THE FISHER MAN
(END OF 1770S)
The water washed, the water rose;
A fellow fishing sat
And watched his bobbin coolly drift,
His blood was cool as that.
A while he sits, a while he harks
— Like silk the ripples tear,
And up in swirls of foam arose
A girl with dripping hair.
She sang to him, she spoke to him:
"Cajole my minnows so
With lore of men, with lure of men,
To death's unholy glow?
If you could know my silver kin,
What cozy hours they passed,
You'd settle under, clothes and all
— A happy life at last.
"The sun, it likes to bathe and bathe;
The moon — now doesn't she?
And don't they both, to breathe the wave,
Look up more brilliantly?
You're not allured by lakes of sky,
More glorious glossy blue?
Not by your very face transformed
In this eternal dew? "
The water washed, the water rose;
It lapped his naked toe.
As longing for the one he loved
He yearned to sink below.
She spoke to him, she sang to him;
The fellow, done for then,
Half yielded too as half she drew,
Was never seen again.
THE GODLIKE
(EARLY 1780S)
Noble let man be,
Helpful and good;
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings
That we know.
Hail to the unknown,
Loftier beings
Our minds prefigure!
Let man be like them;
His example teach us
To believe those.
For unfeeling,
Numb, is nature;
The sun shines
Upon bad and good,
And to the criminal
As to the best
The moon and the stars lend light.
Wind and rivers,
Thunder and hail
Rush on their way
And as they race
Headlong, take hold
One on the other.
So, too, chance
Gropes through the crowd,
And quickly snatches
The boy's curled innocence,
Quickly also
The guilty baldpate.
Following great, bronzen,
Ageless laws
All of us must
Fulfill the circles
Of our existence.
Yet man alone can
Achieve the impossible:
He distinguishes,
Chooses and judges;
He can give lasting
Life to the moment.
He alone should
Reward the good,
Punish the wicked,
Heal and save,
All erring and wandering
Usefully gather.
And we honor
Them, the immortals,
As though they were men,
Achieving in great ways
What the best in little
Achieves or longs to.
Let noble man
Be helpful and good.
Create unwearied
The useful, the just:
Be to us a pattern
Of those prefigured beings.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Essential Goethe by Johann Wolfgang von GOETHE, Matthew Bell. Copyright © 2016 Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS.
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