HARTZ-JOURNEY IN WINTER by JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

THE vulture like --
Who, on heavy clouds of morning
With quiet pinion poising,
Keeps watch for prey --
Hover, my song!

For a God hath
Unto each his path
Fixed beforehand,
Which the fortunate
Tread till the happy
Goal is reached:
But he, the wretched,
Whose heart is pinched with pain,
He struggles vainly
Against the restrictions
Of Fate's thread of iron
Which the shears still unwelcome
But once shall slit.

In dusk of thickets
Crowd the rough-coated deer,
And with the sparrows
Have the rich already
Buried themselves in muck and mire.

Easy the chariot to follow
Driven by Fortune's hand,
Easy as unto the troop
Following the Prince's entry
Is the convenient highway.
But, who fares on by-paths?

In the copse he loses his way,
After him rustle
The branches together,
The grass springs up again,
The wilderness hides him.

Ah, his pangs who shall solace --
His, whose balm becomes poison?
Who but hate of man
Drank from very abundance of love!
First despised, and now the despiser,
Thus in secret he
His own worth consumes
In unsatisfying self-love.

Is there in Thy psalter,
Father of Love, but a tone
Unto his ear accessible,
Then refresh Thou his heart,
To his clouded sight reveal
Where are the thousand fountains
Near to the thirsty one
In the Desert.

Thou, the Creator of joys,
Giving the fullest cup to each,
Favor the sons of the chase,
Tracking signs of their game
With reckless ardor of youth,
Murderous, joyous,
Late avengers of losses,
Which the peasant so vainly
Fought for years with his bludgeon,

But the Solitary fold
In clouds that are golder!
Entwine with winter-green,
Till the rose again is in blossom,
The moistened tresses,
O Love, of thy Poet!

With thy glimmering flambeau
Lightest thou him
Through the waters by night,
Over fathomless courses
On desolate lowlands;
With the thousand hues of the morning
Mak'st thou his heart glad;
With the sting of the storm
Bear'st thou him high aloft:
Winter-torrents plunge from the granite,
In psalms he singeth,
An altar of gratitude sweet
Is for him the perilous summit's
Snow-enshrouded forehead,
Which with circling phantoms
Crowned the faith of the races.

Thou with inscrutable bosom standest
Mysterious in revelation
Above the astonished world,
From clouds down-looking
On all its kingdoms and splendid shows
Which thou from the veins dost water
Of brothers beside thee

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