Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow THE GODLIKE. - 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 GODLIKE. - 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 GODLIKE.

    • NOBLE be man,
    • Helpful and good!
    • For that alone
    • Distinguisheth him
    • From all the beings
    • Unto us known.
    • Hail to the beings,
    • Unknown and glorious,
    • Whom we forebode!
    • From his example
    • Learn we to know them!
    • For unfeeling
    • Nature is ever:
    • On bad and on good
    • The sun alike shineth;
    • And on the wicked
    • As on the best
    • The moon and stars gleam.
    • Tempest and torrent,
    • Thunder and hail,
    • Roar on their path,
    • Seizing the while,
    • As they haste onward,
    • One after another.
    • Even so fortune
    • Gropes ’mid the throng—
    • Innocent boyhood’s
    • Curly head seizing.—
    • Seizing the hoary
    • Head of the sinner.
    • After laws mighty,
    • Brazen, eternal,
    • Must all we mortals
    • Finish the circuit
    • Of our existence.
    • Man and man only
    • Can do the impossible;
    • He ’tis distinguisheth,
    • Chooseth and judgeth;
    • He to the moment
    • Endurance can lend.
    • He and he only
    • The good can reward,
    • The bad can he punish,
    • Can heal and can save;
    • All that wanders and strays
    • Can usefully blend.
    • And we pay homage
    • To the immortals
    • As though they were men,
    • And did in the great,
    • What the best, in the small,
    • Does or might do.
    • Be the man that is noble,
    • Both helpful and good,
    • Unweariedly forming
    • The right and the useful,
    • A type of those beings
    • Our mind hath foreshadow’d