The Golden Goblet

Selected Poems of Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, Frederick Turner, Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, Frederick Turner

• Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781941920794
• eBook ISBN: 9781941920800
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

The Golden Goblet traces Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's poetry from the idealism of youth to the liberation of maturity. In contrast to his rococo contemporaries, Goethe's poetry draws on the graceful simplicity of German folk rhythms to develop complex, transcendent themes. This robust selection, artfully translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner, explores transformation, revolution, and illumination in Goethe's lush lyrical style that forever altered the course of German literature.

Selected Poems

Note

The symbol * is used to indicate stanza breaks lost to pagination.

Epigraph for an Introduction to The West-East Divan

He who poetry would know

Into poem-land must go;

He who would the poets know

Into poet-land must go.

The Luck of Love

Drink, O youth, that daylong blessing

Of your loved one’s eyes’ possessing,

Nightly rocked by her sweet dream;

There’s no lover had it better,

Yet your luck is ever greater

When she’s far away, I deem.

Time and space, eternal forces,

Like the stars in secret courses,

Lull this blood with rockabye.

Passion will be daily slighter,

Yet my heart shall be the lighter,

And my luck will grow thereby.

Nowhere can I now forget her,

Yet in peace I eat without her

In a spirit light and free.

And a hidden coruscation

Turns my love to admiration,

Lust to sensitivity.

Not the lightest cloud, drawn higher

By the sun in warm desire,

Swims in such ethereal breath

As my heart in peace and pleasure.

Free of fear and envy’s measure,

Now I love her beyond death.

1769–70

Dedication

to the recipient of a collection of early poems

So here they are! You have them now!—

These artless, toil-less songs somehow

Sprung from a brookside meadow.

With youth’s sweet pain, in love, aflame,

I played the young man’s ancient game,

And thus I sang its credo.

Sing, you who cannot help but sing

Upon a pretty day of spring;

And youth enlists their fable.

The poet squints, far off, for whom

Hygienic calm has pressed its thumb

Upon his parted eyeball.

Half cross-eyed and half wise, he peers—

Your bliss incites a few wet tears,

He wails in clause and meter.

He listens to his own good sense,

Supplying his best eloquence,

Knows the brief joys are sweeter.

You sigh, and sing, and melt, and kiss,

And shout with joy: the close abyss

Unknowingly disparage.

Escape the field, the sun, the rill,

Slink off, as if in winter’s chill,

To seek the hearth of marriage.

*

You laugh at me and call me fool;

The fox who lost his tail would school

Us all to like curtailment.

But here the tale must surely fail:

This honest fox, snared by the tail,

Warns you from such beguilement.

1770

Maying

How nobly Nature

Shines upon me!

How the sun dazzles!

How laughs the lea!

Blossoms are bursting

From every bough,

A thousand voices

From each bush now,

And joy and pleasure

From every breast.

O Earth, O sunblaze!

O joy! O lust!

O love! O lovely!

So golden fair,

Like morning-nimbus

In mountain air.

How grand your blessings

On each fresh field—

In flower-vapor

The world revealed!

Girl, how I love you,

Just utterly!

How your eye flashes!

How you love me!

*

Just as the lark loves

Air and sweet cry,

And morning-blossoms

The scent of sky,

So I love you, love,

With blood’s warm dart,

Who gives me youth

And joy and heart

For songs unwritten,

Dances to be.

Be always happy,

In love with me!

1771

Welcome and Farewell

My heart beat hard, I sprang to saddle!

The deed was done before the thought.

Night rocked the earth in its soft cradle,

And on the mountains hung the night;

The oak in foggy mantle towered

A giant in the dimming skies,

Where darkness from the bushes glowered

Out of a hundred deep black eyes.

The moon from a great cloud-hill looking

Gazed sadly through a fragrant haze,

The breezes beat their soft wings, plucking

With dreadful rufflings at my ears.

The night shaped forms of monstrous direness,

Yet fresh and joyous was my mood:

For in my veins was such a furnace,

And in my heart such fire and blood!

I saw you, and a gentle sweetness

Flowed from your glance into my soul;

My heart in you found suc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction: Goethe the Revolutionary
• Foreword: Biography as Poetry, Poetry as Biography
• The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems of Goethe
• Afterword: Natural Meanings: On Translation
• List of English and German Titles