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ATONEMENT. - 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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ATONEMENT.

    • PASSION brings reason,—who can pacify
    • An anguish’d heart whose loss hath been so great?
    • Where are the hours that fled so swiftly by?
    • In vain the fairest thou didst gain from Fate;
    • Sad is the soul, confus’d the enterprise;
    • The glorious world, how on the sense it dies!
    • In million tones entwin’d for evermore,
    • Music with angel-pinions hovers there,
    • To pierce man’s being to its inmost core,
    • Eternal beauty as its fruit to bear;
    • The eye grows moist, in yearnings bless’d reveres
    • The godlike worth of music as of tears.
    • And so the lighten’d heart soon learns to see
    • That it still lives, and beats, and ought to beat,
    • Off’ring itself with joy and willingly,
    • In grateful payment for a gift so sweet.
    • And then was felt—oh, may it constant prove!—
    • The twofold bliss of music and of love.