The Poems of Goethe Part 90

YE love, and sonnets write! Fate's strange behest!

The heart, its hidden meaning to declare,

Must seek for rhymes, uniting pair with pair: Learn, children, that the will is weak, at best.

Scarcely with freedom the o'erflowing breast

As yet can speak, and well may it beware;

Tempestuous pa.s.sions sweep each chord that's there, Then once more sink to night and gentle rest.

Why vex yourselves and us, the heavy stone

Up the steep path but step by step to roll?

It falls again, and ye ne'er cease to strive.

THE LOVERS.

But we are on the proper road alone!

If gladly is to thaw the frozen soul,

The fire of love must aye be kept alive.

1807-8.

----- CHARADE.

Two words there 'are, both short, of beauty rare,

Whose sounds our lips so often love to frame,

But which with clearness never can proclaim The things whose own peculiar stamp they bear.

'Tis well in days of age and youth so fair,

One on the other boldly to inflame;

And if those words together link'd we name, A blissful rapture we discover there.

But now to give them pleasure do I seek,

And in myself my happiness would find;

I hope in silence, but I hope for this:

Gently, as loved one's names, those words to speak

To see them both within one image shrin'd,

Both in one being to embrace with bliss.

1807.

EPIGRAMS.

----- In these numbers be express'd Meaning deep, 'neath merry jest.

TO ORIGINALS.

A FELLOW says: "I own no school or college; No master lives whom I acknowledge; And pray don't entertain the thought That from the dead I e'er learnt aught."

This, if I rightly understand, Means: "I'm a blockhead at first hand."

1815.

----- THE SOLDIER'S CONSOLATION.

No! in truth there's here no lack: White the bread, the maidens black!

To another town, next night: Black the bread, the maidens white!

1815.*

----- GENIAL IMPULSE.

THUS roll I, never taking ease, My tub, like Saint Diogenes, Now serious am, now seek to please; Now love and hate in turn one sees; The motives now are those, now these; Now nothings, now realities.

Thus roll I, never taking ease, My tub, like Saint Diogenes.

1810.

----- NEITHER THIS NOR THAT.

IF thou to be a slave shouldst will, Thou'lt get no pity, but fare ill; And if a master thou wouldst be, The world will view it angrily; And if in statu quo thou stay, That thou art but a fool, they'll say.

1815.*

----- THE WAY TO BEHAVE.

THOUGH tempers are bad and peevish folks swear, Remember to ruffle thy brows, friend, ne'er; And let not the fancies of women so fair E'er serve thy pleasure in life to impair.

1815.*

----- THE BEST.

WHEN head and heart are busy, say,

What better can be found?

Who neither loves nor goes astray,

Were better under ground.

1815.*