Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow COMFORT IN TEARS. - Goethe's Works, vol. 1 (Poems)

Return to Title Page for Goethe’s Works, vol. 1 (Poems)

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Literature

COMFORT IN TEARS. - 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.


COMFORT IN TEARS.

    • HOW happens it that thou art sad,
    • While happy all appear?
    • Thine eye proclaims too well that thou
    • Hast wept full many a tear.
    • “If I have wept in solitude,
    • None other shares my grief,
    • And tears to me sweet balsam are,
    • And give my heart relief.”
    • Thy happy friends invite thee now,—
    • Oh, come, then, to our breast!
    • And let the loss thou hast sustain’d
    • Be there to us confess’d!
    • “Ye shout, torment me, knowing not
    • What ’tis afflicteth me;
    • Ah, no! I have sustain’d no loss,
    • Whate’er may wanting be.”
    • If so it is, arise in haste!
    • Thou’rt young and full of life.
    • At years like thine, man’s bless’d with strength
    • And courage for the strife.
    • “Ah, no! in vain ’twould be to strive,
    • The thing I seek is far;
    • It dwells as high, it gleams as fair
    • As yonder glitt’ring star.”
    • The stars we never long to clasp,
    • We revel in their light,
    • And with enchantment upward gaze,
    • Each clear and radiant night.
    • “And I with rapture upward gaze,
    • On many a blissful day;
    • Then let me pass the night in tears,
    • Till tears are wip’d away!”