Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

For several years after his return from Italy Goethe wrote nothing that is of much importance in the history of his literary life. He devoted himself largely to scientific studies in plant and animal morphology and the theory of color. His discovery of the intermaxillary bone in the human skull, and his theory that the lateral organs of a plant are but successive phases of the leaf, have given him an assured if modest place in the history of the development hypothesis. On the other hand, his long and laborious effort to refute Newton's theory of the composition of white light is now generally regarded as a misdirection of energy. In his _Roman Elegies_ (1790) he struck a note of pagan sensuality. The pensive distichs, telling of the wanton doings of Amor amid the grandeur that was Rome, were a little shocking in their frank portraiture of the emancipated flesh. The outbreak of violence in France seemed to him nothing but madness and folly, since he did not see the real Revolution, but only the Paris Terror.

He wrote two or three very ordinary plays to satirize various phases of the revolutionary excitement--phases that now seem as insignificant as the plays themselves. In 1792 he accompanied the Duke of Weimar on the inglorious Austro-Prussian invasion of France, heard the cannonade at Valmy, and was an interested observer as the allies tumbled back over the Rhine. Perhaps the best literary achievement of these years is the fine hexameter version of the medieval _Reynard the Fox_.

The year 1794 marks the beginning of more intimate relations between Goethe and Schiller. Their memorable friendship lasted until Schiller's death, in 1805--the richest decade in the whole history of German letters. The two men became in a sense allies and stood together in the championship of good taste and humane idealism. Goethe's literary occupations during this period were very multifarious; a list of his writings in the various fields of poetry, drama, prose fiction, criticism, biography, art and art-history, literary scholarship, and half a dozen sciences, would show a many-sidedness to which there is no modern parallel. Of all this mass of writing only a few works of major importance can even be mentioned here.

In 1796 appeared _Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship_, a novel which captivated the literary class, if not the general public, and was destined to exert great influence on German fiction for a generation to come. It had been some twenty years in the making. In its earlier form it was called _Wilhelm Meister's Theatrical Mission_.[3] This tells the story of a Werther-like youth who is to be saved from Werther's fate by finding a work to do. His "mission," apparently, is to become a good actor and to promote high ideals of the histrionic art. Incidentally he is ambitious to be a dramatic poet, and his childhood is simply that of Wolfgang Goethe. For reasons intimately connected with his own development Goethe finally decided to change his plan and his title, and to present Wilhelm's variegated experiences as an apprenticeship in the school of life. In the final version Wilhelm comes to the conclusion that the theatre is _not_ his mission--all that was a mistaken ambition. Just what use he _will_ make of his well-disciplined energy does not clearly appear at the end of the story, since Goethe bundles him off to Italy. He was already planning a continuation of the story under the title of _Wilhelm Meister's Journeymanship_. In this second part the hero becomes interested in questions of social uplift and thinks of becoming a surgeon. Taken as a whole _Wilhelm Meister_ moves with a slowness which is quite out of tune with later ideals of prose fiction. It also lacks concentration and artistic finality. But it is replete with Goethe's ripe and mellow wisdom, and it contains more of his intimate self than any other work of his except _Faust_.

During this high noon of his life Goethe again took up his long neglected _Faust_, decided to make two parts of it, completed the First Part, and thought out much that was to go into the Second Part. By this time he had become somewhat alienated from the spirit of his youth, when he had envisaged life in a mist of vague and stormy emotionalism. His present passion was for clearness. So he boldly decided to convert the old tragedy of sin and suffering into a drama of mental clearing-up. The early Faust--the pessimist, murderer, seducer--was to be presented as temporarily wandering in the dark; as a man who had gone grievously wrong in passionate error, but was essentially "good" by virtue of his aspiring nature, and hence, in the Lord's fulness of time, was to be led out into the light and saved. The First Part, ending with the heart-rending death of Margaret in her prison-cell, and leaving Faust in an agony of remorse, was published in 1808. Faust's redemption, by enlarged experience of life and especially by his symbolic union with the Greek Queen of Beauty, was reserved for the Second Part.

The other more notable works of this period are _Hermann and Dorothea_, a delightful poem in dactylic hexameters, picturing a bit of German still life against the sinister background of the French Revolution, and the _Natural Daughter_, which was planned to body forth, in the form of a dramatic trilogy in blank verse, certain phases of Goethe's thinking about the upheaval in France. In the former he appears once more as a poet of the plain people, with an eye and a heart for their ways and their outlook upon life. Everybody likes _Hermann and Dorothea_. On the other hand, the _Natural Daughter_ is disappointing, and not merely because it is a fragment. (Only the first part of the intended trilogy was written.) Goethe had now convinced himself that the function of art is to present the typical. Accordingly the characters appear as types of humanity divested of all that is accidental or peculiar to the individual. The most of them have not even a name. The consequence is that, notwithstanding the splendid verse and the abounding wisdom of the speeches, the personages do not seem to be made of genuine human stuff. As a great thinker's comment on the Revolution the _Natural Daughter_ is almost negligible.

The decade that followed the death of Schiller was for Germany a time of terrible trial, during which Goethe pursued the even tenor of his way as a poet and man of science. He had little sympathy with the national uprising against Napoleon, whom he looked on as the invincible subduer of the hated Revolution. From the point of view of our modern nationalism, which was just then entering on its world-transforming career, his conduct was unpatriotic. But let him at least be rightly understood. It was not that he lacked sympathy for the German people, but he misjudged and underestimated the new forces that were coming into play. As the son of an earlier age he could only conceive a people's welfare as the gift of a wise ruler. He thought of politics as the affair of the great. He hated war and all eruptive violence, being convinced that good would come, not by such means, but by enlightenment, self-control and attending to one's work in one's sphere. To the historian Luden he said in 1813:

"Do not believe that I am indifferent to the great ideas of freedom, people, fatherland. No! These ideas are in us, they are a part of our being, and no one can cast them from him. I too have a warm heart for Germany. I have often felt bitter pain in thinking of the German people, so worthy of respect in some ways, so miserable on the whole. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses painful emotions which I try in every way to surmount; and in science and art I have found the wings whereby I rise above them. But the comfort which these afford is after all a poor comfort that does not compensate for the proud consciousness of belonging to a great and strong people that is honored and feared."

In 1808 he published _The Elective Affinities_, a novel in which the tragic effects of lawless passion invading the marriage relation were set forth with telling art. Soon after this he began to write a memoir of his life. He was now a European celebrity, the dream of his youth had come true, and he purposed to show in detail how everything had happened; that is, how his literary personality had evolved amid the environing conditions. He conceived himself as a phenomenon to be explained. That he called his memoir _Poetry and Truth_ was perhaps an error of judgment, since the title has been widely misunderstood. For Goethe poetry was not the antithesis of truth, but a higher species of truth--the actuality as seen by the selecting, combining, and harmonizing imagination. In themselves, he would have said, the facts of a man's life are meaningless, chaotic, discordant: it is the poet's office to put them into the crucible of his spirit and give them forth as a significant and harmonious whole. The "poetry" of Goethe's autobiography--by far the best of autobiographies in the German language--must not be taken to imply concealment, perversion, substitution, or anything of that gross kind.

It lies in the very style of the book and is a part of its author's method of self-revelation. That he devotes so much space to the seemingly transient and unimportant love-affairs of his youth is only his way of recognizing that the poet-soul is born of love and nourished by love. He felt that these fleeting amorosities were a part of the natural history of his inner being.

And even in the serene afternoon of his life lovely woman often disturbed his soul, just as in the days of his youth. But the poetic expression of his feeling gradually became less simple and direct: he liked to embroider it with musing reflections and exotic fancies gathered from everywhere. Just as he endeavored with indefatigable eagerness of mind to keep abreast of scientific research, so he tried to assimilate the poetry of all nations. The Greeks and Romans no longer sufficed his omnivorous appetite and his "panoramic ability." When Hammer-Purgstall's German version of the _D[=i]w[=a]n_ of H[=a]f[=i]z came into his hands he at once set about making himself at home in the mental world of the Persian and Arabic poets. Thus arose his _Divan_ (1819), in which he imitated the oriental costume, but not the form. His aim was to reproduce in German verse the peculiar savor of the Orientals, with their unique blend of sensuality, wit, and mystic philosophy. But the feeling--the inner experience--was all his own. The best book of the _Divan_, the one called _Suleika_, was inspired by a very real liking for Marianne Willemer, a talented lady who played the love-game with him and actually wrote some of the poems long ascribed to Goethe himself.

At last, in 1824, when he was seventy-five years old, he came back once more to his _Faust_, the completion of which had long floated before his mind as a duty that he owed to himself and to the world. There was no longer any doubt as to what his great life-work was to be. With admirable energy and with perfect clarity of vision he addressed himself to the gigantic task, the general plan of which and many of the details had been thought out long before. It was finished in the summer of 1831. About sixty years after he had penned the first words of Faust, the disgruntled pessimist at war with life, he took leave of him as a purified soul mounting upward among the saints toward the Ineffable Light, under the mystic guidance of the Eternal-Womanly.

Goethe died March 18, 1832. The story that his last words were "more light" is probably nothing more than a happy invention.

Admirers of the great German see more in him than the author of the various works which have been all too briefly characterized in the preceding sketch. His is a case where, in very truth, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. Goethe is the representative of an epoch. He stands for certain ideals which are not those of the present hour, but which it was of inestimable value to the modern man to have thus nobly worked out and exemplified in practice. Behind and beneath his writings, informing them and giving them their value for posterity, is a wonderful personality which it is a delight and an education to study in the whole process of its evolution. By way of struggle, pain and error, like his own Faust, he arrived at a view of life, in which he found inspiration and inner peace. It is outlined in the verses which he placed before his short poems as a sort of motto:

Wide horizon, eager life,
Busy years of honest strife,
Ever seeking, ever founding,
Never ending, ever rounding,
Guarding tenderly the old,
Taking of the new glad hold,
Pure in purpose, light of heart,
Thus we gain--at least a start.

POEMS

GREETING AND DEPARTURE[4] (1771)

My heart throbbed high: to horse, away then!
Swift as a hero to the fight!
Earth in the arms of evening lay then,
And o'er the mountains hung the night,
Now could I see like some huge giant
The haze-enveloped oak-tree rise,
While from the thicket stared defiant
The darkness with its hundred eyes.

The cloud-throned moon from his dominion
Peered drowsily through veils of mist.
The wind with gently-wafting pinion
Gave forth a rustling strange and whist.
With shapes of fear the night was thronging
But all the more my courage glowed;
My soul flamed up in passionate longing
And hot my heart with rapture flowed.

I saw thee; melting rays of pleasure
Streamed o'er me from thy tender glance,
My heart beat only to thy measure,
I drew my breath as in a trance.
The radiant hue of spring caressing
Lay rosy on thy upturned face,
And love--ye gods, how rich the blessing!
I dared not hope to win such grace.

To part--alas what grief in this is!--
In every look thy heart spoke plain.
What ecstasy was in thy kisses!
What changing thrill of joy and pain!
I went. One solace yet to capture,
Thine eyes pursued in sweet distress.
But to be loved, what holy rapture!
To love, ah gods, what happiness!

THE HEATHROSE[5] (1771)

Once a boy a Rosebud spied,
Heathrose fair and tender,
All array'd in youthful pride,--
Quickly to the spot he hied,
Ravished by her splendor.
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Heathrose fair and tender!
Said the boy, "I'll now pick thee
Heathrose fair and tender!"
Rosebud cried "And I'll prick thee,
So thou shalt remember me,
Ne'er will I surrender!"
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Heathrose fair and tender!
But the wanton plucked the rose,
Heathrose fair and tender;
Thorns the cruel theft oppose,
Brief the struggle and vain the woes,
She must needs surrender.
Rosebud, rosebud, rosebud red,
Heathrose fair and tender!

MAHOMET'S SONG[6] (1773)

[This song was intended to be introduced in a dramatic poem entitled _Mahomet_, the plan of which was not carried out by Goethe. He mentions that it was to have been sung by Ali toward the end of the piece, in honor of his master, Mahomet, shortly before his death, and when at the height of his glory, of which it is typical.]

See the rock-born stream!
Like the gleam
Of a star so bright!
Kindly spirits
High above the clouds
Nourished him while youthful
In the copse between the cliffs.

Young and fresh,
From the clouds he danceth
Down upon the marble rocks;
Then tow'rd heaven
Leaps exulting.

Through the mountain-passes
Chaseth he the color'd pebbles,
And, advancing like a chief,
Draws his brother streamlets with him
In his course.

In the vale below
'Neath his footsteps spring the flowers,
And the meadow
In his breath finds life.

Yet no shady vale can stay him,
Nor can flowers,
Round his knees all softly twining
With their loving eyes detain him;
To the plain his course he taketh,
Serpent-winding.

Eager streamlets
Join his waters. And now moves he
O'er the plain in silv'ry glory,
And the plain in him exults,
And the rivers from the plain,
And the streamlets from the mountain,
Shout with joy, exclaiming: "Brother,
Brother, take thy brethren with thee.
With thee to thine agèd father,
To the everlasting ocean,
Who, with arms outstretching far,
Waiteth for us;
Ah, in vain those arms lie open
To embrace his yearning children;
For the thirsty sand consumes us
In the desert waste; the sunbeams
Drink our life-blood; hills around us
Into lakes would dam us! Brother,
Take thy brethren of the plain,
Take thy brethren of the mountain
With thee, to thy father's arms!"--

Let all come, then!--
And now swells he
Lordlier still; yea, e'en a people
Bears his regal flood on high!
And in triumph onward rolling,
Names to countries gives he,--cities
Spring to light beneath his foot.

Ever, ever, on he rushes,
Leaves the towers' flame-tipp'd summits,
Marble palaces, the offspring
Of his fulness, far behind.

Cedar-houses bears the Atlas
On his giant shoulders; flutt'ring
In the breeze far, far above him
Thousand flags are gaily floating,
Bearing witness to his might.

And so beareth he his brethren,
All his treasures, all his children,
Wildly shouting, to the bosom
Of his long-expectant sire.

PROMETHEUS[7] (1774)

Cover thy spacious heavens, Zeus,
With clouds of mist,
And, like the boy who lops
The thistles' heads,
Disport with oaks and mountain-peaks;
Yet thou must leave

My earth still standing;
My cottage too, which was not raised by thee,
Leave me my hearth,
Whose kindly glow
By thee is envied.

I know nought poorer
Under the sun, than ye gods!
Ye nourish painfully,
With sacrifices
And votive prayers,
Your majesty;
Ye would e'en starve,
If children and beggars
Were not trusting fools.
While yet a child,
And ignorant of life,
I turned my wandering gaze
Up tow'rd the sun, as if with him
There were an ear to hear my wailing,
A heart, like mine
To feel compassion for distress.

Who help'd me
Against the Titans' insolence?
Who rescued me from certain death,
From slavery?
Didst thou not do all this thyself,
My sacred glowing heart?
And glowedst, young and good,
Deceived with grateful thanks
To yonder slumbering one?

I honor thee! and why?
Hast thou e'er lighten'd the sorrows
Of the heavy laden?
Hast thou e'er dried up the tears

Of the anguish-stricken?
Was I not fashion'd to be a man
By omnipotent Time,
And by eternal Fate,
Masters of me and thee?

Didst thou e'er fancy
That life I should learn to hate,
And fly to deserts,
Because not all
My blossoming dreams grew ripe?

Here sit I, forming mortals
After my image;
A race resembling me,
To suffer, to weep,
To enjoy, to be glad,
And thee to scorn,
As I!

THE WANDERER'S NIGHT-SONG[8] (1776)

Thou who comest from on high,
Who all woes and sorrows stillest,
Who, for two-fold misery,
Hearts with twofold balsam fillest,
Would this constant strife would cease!
What avails the joy and pain?
Blissful Peace,
To my bosom come again!

THE SEA-VOYAGE[9] (1776)

Many a day and night my bark stood ready laden;
Waiting fav'ring winds, I sat with true friends round me,
Pledging me to patience and to courage,
In the haven.

And they spoke thus with impatience twofold:
"Gladly pray we for thy rapid passage,
Gladly for thy happy voyage; fortune
In the distant world is waiting for thee,
In our arms thou'lt find thy prize, and love too,
When returning."

And when morning came, arose an uproar
And the sailors' joyous shouts awoke us;
All was stirring, all was living, moving,
Bent on sailing with the first kind zephyr.

And the sails soon in the breeze are swelling,
And the sun with fiery love invites us;
Fill'd the sails are, clouds on high are floating,
On the shore each friend exulting raises
Songs of hope, in giddy joy expecting
Joy the voyage through, as on the morn of sailing,
And the earliest starry nights so radiant.

But by God-sent changing winds ere long he's driven
Sideways from the course he had intended,
And he feigns as though he would surrender,
While he gently striveth to outwit them,
To his goal, e'en when thus press'd, still faithful.

But from out the damp gray distance rising,
Softly now the storm proclaims its advent,
Presseth down each bird upon the waters,
Presseth down the throbbing hearts of mortals.
And it cometh. At its stubborn fury,
Wisely ev'ry sail the seaman striketh;
With the anguish-laden ball are sporting
Wind and water.

And on yonder shore are gather'd standing,
Friends and lovers, trembling for the bold one:
"Why, alas, remain'd he here not with us!
Ah, the tempest I Cast away by fortune!
Must the good one perish in this fashion?
Might not he perchance * * *. Ye great immortals!"

Yet he, like a man, stands by his rudder;
With the bark are sporting wind and water,
Wind and water sport not with his bosom:
On the fierce deep looks he, as a master,--
In his gods, or shipwreck'd, or safe landed,
Trusting ever.

TO THE MOON[10] (1778)

Bush and vale thou fill'st again
With thy misty ray,
And my spirit's heavy chain
Casteth far away.

Thou dost o'er my fields extend
Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching like a gentle friend,
O'er my destiny.

Vanish'd days of bliss and woe
Haunt me with their tone,
Joy and grief in turns I know,
As I stray alone.

Stream beloved, flow on! Flow on!
Ne'er can I be gay!
Thus have sport and kisses gone,
Truth thus pass'd away.

Once I seem'd the lord to be
Of that prize so fair!
Now, to our deep sorrow, we
Can forget it ne'er.

Murmur, stream, the vale along,
Never cease thy sighs;
Murmur, whisper to my song
Answering melodies!

When thou in the winter's night
Overflow'st in wrath,
Or in spring-time sparklest bright,
As the buds shoot forth.

He who from the world retires,
Void of hate, is blest;
Who a friend's true love inspires,
Leaning on his breast!

That which heedless man ne'er knew,
Or ne'er thought aright,
Roams the bosom's labyrinth through,
Boldly into night.

THE FISHERMAN[11] (1778)

The waters rush'd, the waters rose,
A fisherman sat by,
While on his line in calm repose
He cast his patient eye.
And as he sat, and hearken'd there,
The flood was cleft in twain,
And, lo! a dripping mermaid fair
Sprang from the troubled main.

She sang to him, and spake the while
"Why lurest thou my brood,
With human wit and human guile
From out their native flood?
Oh, couldst thou know how gladly dart
The fish across the sea,
Thou wouldst descend, e'en as thou art,
And truly happy be!

Do not the sun and moon with grace
Their forms in ocean lave?
Shines not with twofold charms their face,
When rising from the wave?
The deep, deep heavens, then lure thee not,--
The moist yet radiant blue,--
Not thine own form,--to tempt thy lot
'Midst this eternal dew?"

The waters rush'd, the waters rose,
Wetting his naked feet;
As if his true love's words were those,
His heart with longing beat.
She sang to him, to him spake she,
His doom was fix'd, I ween;
Half drew she him, and half sank he,
And ne'er again was seen.

THE WANDERER'S NIGHT-SONG[12] (1780)

[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 _Iphigenie_.]

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.

THE ERL-KING[13] (1782)

Who rides there so late through the night dark and drear?
The father it is, with his infant so dear;
He holdeth the boy tightly clasp'd in his arm,
He holdeth him safely, he keepeth him warm.

"My son, wherefore seek's thou thy face thus to hide?"
"Look, father, the Erl-King is close by our side!
Dost see not the Erl-King, with crown and with train?"
"My son, 'tis the mist rising over the plain."

"Oh come, thou dear infant! oh come thou with me!
Full many a game I will play there with thee;
On my strand, lovely flowers their blossoms unfold,
My mother shall grace thee with garments of gold."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not hear
The words that the Erl-King now breathes in mine ear?"
"Be calm, dearest child, 'tis thy fancy deceives;
'Tis the sad wind that sighs through the withering leaves."

"Wilt go, then, dear infant, wilt go with me there?
My daughters shall tend thee with sisterly care;
My daughters by night their glad festival keep,
They'll dance thee, and rock thee, and sing thee to sleep."

"My father, my father, and dost thou not see,
How the Erl-King his daughters has brought here for me?"
"My darling, my darling, I see it aright,
'Tis the agèd gray willows deceiving thy sight."

"I love thee, I'm charm'd by thy beauty, dear boy!
And if thou'rt unwilling, then force I'll employ."
"My father, my father, he seizes me fast,
Full sorely the Erl-King has hurt me at last."

The father now gallops, with terror half wild,
He grasps in his arms the poor shuddering child;
He reaches his court-yard with toil and with dread,--
The child in his arms finds he motionless, dead.

THE GODLIKE[14] (1783)

Noble be man,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguisheth him
From all the beings
Unto us known.

Hail to the beings,
Unknown and glorious,
Whom we forebode!
From _his_ example
Learn we to know them!

For unfeeling
Nature is ever
On bad and on good
The sun alike shineth;
And on the wicked,
As on the best,
The moon and stars gleam.

Tempest and torrent,
Thunder and hail,
Roar on their path,
Seizing the while,
As they haste onward,
One after another.

Even so, fortune
Gropes 'mid the throng--
Innocent boyhood's
Curly head seizing,--
Seizing the hoary
Head of the sinner.

After laws mighty,
Brazen, eternal,
Must all we mortals
Finish the circuit
Of our existence.

Man, and man only
Can do the impossible
He 'tis distinguisheth,
Chooseth and judgeth;
He to the moment
Endurance can lend.

He and he only
The good can reward,
The bad can he punish,
Can heal and can save;
All that wanders and strays
Can usefully blend.

And we pay homage
To the immortals
As though they were men,
And did in the great,
What the best, in the small,
Does or might do.

Be the man that is noble,
Both helpful and good,
Unweariedly forming
The right and the useful,
A type of those beings
Our mind hath foreshadow'd!

MIGNON[15] (1785)

[This universally known poem is also to be found in _Wilhelm Meister_.]

Know'st thou the land where the fair citron blows,
Where the bright orange midst the foliage glows,
Where soft winds greet us from the azure skies,
Where silent myrtles, stately laurels rise,
Know'st thou it well?

'Tis there, 'tis there,
That I with thee, beloved one, would repair.

Know'st thou the house? On columns rests its pile,
Its halls are gleaming, and its chambers smile,
And marble statues stand and gaze on me:
"Poor child! what sorrow hath befallen thee?"
Know'st thou it well?

'Tis there, 'tis there,
That I with thee, protector, would repair!

Know'st thou the mountain, and its cloudy bridge?
The mule can scarcely find the misty ridge;
In caverns dwells the dragon's olden brood,
The frowning crag obstructs the raging flood.
Know'st thou it well?

'Tis there, 'tis there,
Our path lies--Father--thither, oh repair!

PROXIMITY OF THE BELOVED ONE[16] (1795)

I think of thee, whene'er the sun his beams
O'er ocean flings;
I think of thee, whene'er the moonlight gleams
In silv'ry springs.

I see thee, when upon the distant ridge
The dust awakes;
At midnight's hour, when on the fragile bridge
The wanderer quakes.

I hear thee, when yon billows rise on high,
With murmur deep.
To tread the silent grove oft wander I,
When all's asleep.

I'm near thee, though thou far away mayst be--
Thou, too, art near!
The sun then sets, the stars soon lighten me,
Would thou wert here!

THE SHEPHERD'S LAMENT[17] (1802)

Up yonder on the mountain,
I dwelt for days together;
Looked down into the valley,
This pleasant summer weather.

My sheep go feeding onward,
My dog sits watching by;
I've wandered to the valley,
And yet I know not why.

The meadow, it is pretty,
With flowers so fair to see;
I gather them, but no one
Will take the flowers from me.

The good tree gives me shadow,
And shelter from the rain;
But yonder door is silent,
It will not ope again!

I see the rainbow bending,
Above her old abode,
But she is there no longer;
They've taken my love abroad.

They took her o'er the mountains,
They took her o'er the sea;
Move on, move on, my bonny sheep,
There is no rest for me!

NATURE AND ART[18] (1802)

Nature and art asunder seem to fly,
Yet sooner than we think find common ground;
In place of strife, harmonious songs resound,
And both, at one, to my abode draw nigh.
In sooth but one endeavor I descry:
Then only, when in ordered moments' round
Wisdom and toil our lives to Art have bound,
Dare we rejoice in Nature's liberty.
Thus is achievement fashioned everywhere:
Not by ungovernable, hasty zeal
Shalt thou the height of perfect form attain.
Husband thy strength, if great emprize thou dare;
In self-restraint thy masterhood reveal,
And under law thy perfect freedom gain.

COMFORT IN TEARS[19] (1803)

How is it that thou art so sad
When others are so gay?
Thou hast been weeping--nay, thou hast!
Thine eyes the truth betray.

"And if I may not choose but weep
Is not my grief mine own?
No heart was heavier yet for tears--
O leave me, friend, alone!"

Come join this once the merry band,
They call aloud for thee,
And mourn no more for what is lost,
But let the past go free.

"O, little know ye in your mirth,
What wrings my heart so deep!
I have not lost the idol yet,
For which I sigh and weep."

Then rouse thee and take heart! thy blood
Is young and full of fire;
Youth should have hope and might to win,
And wear its best desire.

"O, never may I hope to gain
What dwells from me so far;
It stands as high, it looks as bright,
As yonder burning star."

Why, who would seek to woo the stars
Down from their glorious sphere?
Enough it is to worship them,
When nights are calm and clear.

"Oh, I look up and worship too--
My star it shines by day--
Then let me weep the livelong night
The while it is away."