The Poems of Goethe Part 23

Sail safely to the last!"

1774.

----- TO A GOLDEN HEART THAT HE WORE ROUND HIS NECK.

[Addressed, during the Swiss tour already mentioned, to a present Lily had given him, during the time of their happy connection, which was then about to be terminated for ever.]

OH thou token loved of joys now perish'd

That I still wear from my neck suspended, Art thou stronger than our spirit-bond so cherish'd?

Or canst thou prolong love's days untimely ended?

Lily, I fly from thee! I still am doom'd to range Thro' countries strange,

Thro' distant vales and woods, link'd on to thee!

Ah, Lily's heart could surely never fall

So soon away from me!

As when a bird bath broken from his thrall,

And seeks the forest green, Proof of imprisonment he bears behind him, A morsel of the thread once used to bind him;

The free-born bird of old no more is seen,

For he another's prey bath been.

1775.

----- THE BLISS OF SORROW.

NEVER dry, never dry,

Tears that eternal love sheddeth!

How dreary, how dead doth the world still appear, When only half-dried on the eye is the tear!

Never dry, never dry,

Tears that unhappy love sheddeth!

1789.*

----- THE WANDERER'S NIGHT-SONG.

THOU who comest from on high,

Who all woes and sorrows stillest, Who, for twofold misery,

Hearts with twofold balsam fillest, Would this constant strife would cease!

What are pain and rapture now?

Blissful Peace,

To my bosom hasten thou!

1789.*

----- THE SAME.

[Written at night on the Kickelhahn, a hill in the forest of Ilmenau, on the walls of a little hermitage where Goethe composed the last act of his Iphigenia.]

HUSH'D on the hill

Is the breeze;

Scarce by the zephyr

The trees

Softly are press'd; The woodbird's asleep on the bough.

Wait, then, and thou

Soon wilt find rest.

1783.

----- THE HUNTER'S EVEN-SONG.

THE plain with still and wand'ring feet,

And gun full-charged, I tread, And hov'ring see thine image sweet,

Thine image dear, o'er head.

In gentle silence thou dost fare

Through field and valley dear; But doth my fleeting image ne'er

To thy mind's eye appear?

His image, who, by grief oppress'd,

Roams through the world forlorn, And wanders on from east to west,

Because from thee he's torn?

When I would think of none but thee,

Mine eyes the moon survey; A calm repose then steals o'er me,

But how, 'twere hard to say.