West-Eastern Divan. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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their delighted play;
The wandering mass, that fleets and flows,
Yields as we sway and stray.
If thus the soul's hot brand be cooled
Then song shall echo clear;
Water, poet's pure hand ruled,
Rounds to a crystal sphere.
XIV. AUDACITY
WHAT spring of healing has been found
For man, where'er he be?
All with glad heart attend a sound
Shapen to harmony.
Hence with whate'er embroils your way!
Nor gloom-enshrouded strive;
Before he sing, before he stay,
The poet first must live.
So may the brazen clang of life
Reverberate through the soul;
The poet's heart though torn by strife
He will himself make whole.
XV. HALE AND HARDY
SONG is a certain arrogance,
Let none find fault with me!
But bravely let the warm blood dance
Be gay as I and free.
If bitter every hour's distress
Upon my palate grew,
I should be modest, and no less
Nay, rather more than you.
For modesty charms everyone
In budding maidenhood;
Girls would be gently wooed and won
And fly before the rude.
And with a wise man modesty
Befits – some sage who might
Of time and of eternity
Teach me the lore aright.
Song is a certain arrogance!
I ply my craft alone;
Friends, women, of the dancing blood
Come in, come every one!
You cowl-less shaveling! zealous breath
Waste not on me! Your flow
Of speech might do my soul to death,
But make me modest – No!
Your vacuous phrases make me run;
Such stuff since many a day,
Shoe-leather that I trod upon,
For me was worn away.
When round the poet's mill-wheel turns,
Stop not his whirl of rhymes;
For who once understands us learns
To pardon us betimes.
XVI. UNIVERSAL LIFE
DUST is an element from which
Your art a use can wring,
Hafiz, when to extol your Love
Some dainty song you sing.
For more to be preferred is dust
That on her threshold lights,
Than carpet on whose gold-wrought flowers
Kneel Mahmud's favourites.
If from her door whirl clouds of dust,
Driven by some wind that blows,
Sweeter it breathes to you than musk,
Or attar of the rose.
Dust! long I was deprived of it
In the mist-shrouded North,
But in the glowing South for me
There surely was no dearth.
Loved doors, upon your hinges long
Sounded no sweet recoil!
Come, heal me, ye tempestuous rains,
And scent of breathing soil!
For now if all the thunders roll,
Wide heaven with leven glow,
The wind's wild dust, rain-saturate,
Will fall to earth below.
Straightway life leaps; a sacred force
And secret strives in birth;
Fresh mists exhale, green things arise,
O'er all the bounds of earth.
XVII
OVER the dust comes a shadow black, the beloved's attendant,
Dust I made me for her, but the shadow passed o'er me away.
An image may I not devise,
If such my pleasure be?
God gives an image of our life
In every midge we see.
An image may I not devise,
If such my pleasure be?
For imaged in my true love's eyes
God gives Himself to me.
XVIII. BLESSED YEARNING
TELL it the wise alone, for when
Will the crowd cease from mockery!
Him would I laud of living men
Who longs a fiery death to die.
In coolness of those nights of love
Which thee begat, bade thee beget,
Strange promptings wake in thee and move,
While the calm taper glimmers yet.
No more in darkness canst thou rest,
Waited upon by shadows blind,
A new desire has thee possessed
For procreant joys of loftier kind.
Distance can hinder not thy flight;
Exiled, thou seekest a point illumed;
And, last, enamoured of the light,
A moth art in the flame consumed.
And while thou spurnest at the best,
Whose word is " Die and be new-born! "
Thou bidest but a cloudy guest
Upon an earth that knows not morn.