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LONGING. - 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.

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LONGING.

    • WHAT pulls at my heart so?
    • What tells me to roam?
    • What drags me and lures me
    • From chamber and home?
    • How round the cliffs gather
    • The clouds high in air!
    • I fain would go thither,
    • I fain would be there!
    • The sociable flight
    • Of the ravens comes back;
    • I mingle amongst them,
    • And follow their track.
    • Round wall and round mountain
    • Together we fly;
    • She tarries below there,
    • I after her spy.
    • Then onward she wanders,
    • My flight I wing soon
    • To the wood fill’d with bushes,
    • A bird of sweet tune.
    • She tarries and hearkens,
    • And smiling, thinks she:
    • “How sweetly he’s singing!
    • He’s singing to me!”
    • The heights are illum’d
    • By the fast setting sun;
    • The pensive fair maiden
    • Looks thoughtfully on;
    • She roams by the streamlet,
    • O’er meadows she goes,
    • And darker and darker
    • The pathway fast grows.
    • I rise on a sudden,
    • A glimmering star;
    • “What glitters above me,
    • So near and so far?”
    • And when thou with wonder
    • Hast gaz’d on the light,
    • I fall down before thee,
    • Entranc’d by thy sight!