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.

      

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