Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow THE EAGLE AND DOVE. - 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

THE EAGLE AND DOVE. - 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.


THE EAGLE AND DOVE.

    • IN search of prey once rais’d his pinions An eaglet;
    • A huntsman’s arrow came and reft
    • His right wing of all motive power.
    • Headlong he fell into a myrtle grove,
    • For three long days on anguish fed,
    • In torment writh’d
    • Throughout three long, three weary nights;
    • And then was cured,
    • Thanks to all-healing Nature’s
    • Soft, omnipresent balm.
    • He crept away from out the copse
    • And stretch’d his wing—alas!
    • Lost is all power of flight—
    • He scarce can lift himself
    • From off the ground
    • To catch some mean, unworthy prey,
    • And rests, deep-sorrowing,
    • On the low rock beside the stream.
    • Up to the oak he looks,
    • Looks up to heaven,
    • While in his noble eye there gleams a tear.
    • Then, rustling through the myrtle boughs, behold,
    • There comes a wanton pair of doves
    • Who settle down, and, nodding, strut
    • O’er the gold sands beside the stream,
    • And gradually approach;
    • Their red-tinged eyes so full of love
    • Soon see the inward-sorrowing one.
    • The male, inquisitively social, leaps
    • On the next bush, and looks
    • Upon him kindly and complacently.
    • “Thou sorrowest,” murmurs he:
    • “Be of good cheer, my friend!
    • All that is needed for calm happiness
    • Hast thou not here?
    • Hast thou not pleasure in the golden bough
    • That shields thee from the day’s fierce glow?
    • Canst thou not raise thy breast to catch
    • On the soft moss beside the brook
    • The sun’s last rays at even?
    • Here thou may’st wander through the flowers’ fresh dew,
    • Pluck from the overflow
    • The forest-trees provide
    • The choicest food,—may’st quench
    • Thy light thirst at the silvery spring.
    • O friend, true happiness
    • Lies in contentedness,
    • And that contentedness
    • Finds everywhere enough.”
    • “O wise one!” said the eagle, while he sank
    • In deep and ever-deep’ning thought—
    • “O Wisdom! like a dove thou speakest!”