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THE KING OF THULE. - 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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THE KING OF THULE.

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    • IN Thule liv’d a monarch,
    • Still faithful to the grave,
    • To whom his dying mistress
    • A golden goblet gave.
    • Beyond all price he deem’d it,
    • He quaff’d it at each feast;
    • And, when he drain’d that goblet,
    • His tears to flow ne’er ceas’d.
    • And when he felt death near him,
    • His cities o’er he told,
    • And to his heir left all things,
    • But not that cup of gold.
    • A regal banquet held he
    • In his ancestral hall,
    • In yonder sea-wash’d castle,
    • ’Mongst his great nobles all.
    • There stood the aged reveller,
    • And drank his last life’s-glow,
    • Then hurl’d the holy goblet
    • Into the flood below.
    • He saw it falling, filling,
    • And sinking ’neath the main,
    • His eyes then clos’d forever,
    • He never drank again.