Of human sin, and rest instead
On nature's heart inviolate--
All summer singing o'er my head!

There would I never disembark,
Nay, only graze the flowery shore
To pluck a rose beneath the lark,
Then go my liquid way once more,

And watch, far off, the drowsy lines
Of herded cattle crop and pass,
The vintagers among the vines,
The mowers in the dewy grass;

And nothing would I drink or eat
Save heaven's clear sunlight and the spring
Of earth's own welling waters sweet,
That never make the pulses sting.

* * * * *

SONNET[64] (1822)

Oh, he whose pain means life, whose life means pain,
May feel again what I have felt before;
Who has beheld his bliss above him soar
And, when he sought it, fly away again;
Who in a labyrinth has tried in vain,
When he has lost his way, to find a door;
Whom love has singled out for nothing more
Than with despondency his soul to bane;
Who begs each lightning for a deadly stroke,
Each stream to drown the heart that cannot heal
From all the cruel stabs by which it broke;
Who does begrudge the dead their beds like steel
Where they are safe from love's beguiling yoke--
He knows me quite, and feels what I must feel.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: From Addresses on Religion (Discourse IV).]

[Footnote 2: This refers to the second book, which takes the form of a
dialogue between the inquirer and a Spirit.]

[Footnote 3: An allusion to the second book.]

[Footnote 4: The audience gathered in the building of the Royal
Academy at Berlin.--ED.]

[Footnote 5: J.G. Hamann. _Hellenistische Briefe_ I, 189.]

[Footnote 6: Goethe. _Werke_ (1840) xxx., 352. Mr. Ward's translation
of Goethe's "Essays on Art," p. 76.]

[Footnote 7: Selections translated by Margarete Muensterberg.]

[Footnote 8: Permission George Bell & Son, London.]

[Footnote 9: Translator: H.W. Dulcken. Permission Ward, Lock & Company,
Ltd., London.]

[Footnote 10: Translator: Margarete Muensterberg.]

[Footnote 11: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]

[Footnote 12: Translator: Herman Montagu Donner.]

[Footnote 13: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]

[Footnote 14: Translator: Margarete Muensterberg.]

[Footnote 15: Translator: Margarete Muensterberg.]

[Footnote 16: Translator: Margarete Muensterberg.]

[Footnote 17: Translator: C.T. Brooks.]

[Footnote 18: Translator: W.W. Skeat.]

[Footnote 19