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TO THE KIND READER. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethe’s Works, vol. 1 (Poems) [1885]

Edition used:

Goethe’s Works, illustrated by the best German artists, 5 vols. (Philadelphia: G. Barrie, 1885). Vol. 1.

Part of: Goethe’s Works, 5 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


TO THE KIND READER.

    • NO one talks more than a Poet;
    • Fain he’d have the people know it,
    • Praise or blame he ever loves;
    • None in prose confess an error,
    • Yet we do so, void of terror,
    • In the Muses’ silent groves.
    • What I err’d in, what corrected,
    • What I suffer’d, what effected,
    • To this wreath as flow’rs belong;
    • For the ag’d, and the youthful,
    • And the vicious, and the truthful,
    • All are fair when view’d in song.