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Subject Area: Literature

JUNE. - 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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JUNE.

    • SHE behind you mountain lives,
    • Who my love’s sweet guerdon gives.
    • Tell me, mount, how this can be!
    • Very glass thou seem’st to me,
    • And I seem to be close by,
    • For I see her drawing nigh;
    • Now, because I’m absent, sad,
    • Now, because she sees me, glad!
    • Soon between us rise to sight
    • Valleys cool, with bushes light,
    • Streams and meadows; next appear
    • Mills and wheels, the surest token
    • That a level spot is near,
    • Plains far-stretching and unbroken.
    • And so onward, onward roam,
    • To my garden and my home!
    • But how comes it then to pass?
    • All this gives no joy, alas!—
    • I was ravish’d by her sight,
    • By her eyes so fair and bright,
    • By her footstep soft and light.
    • How her peerless charms I prais’d,
    • When from head to foot I gaz’d!
    • I am here, she’s far away,—
    • I am gone with her to stay.
    • If on rugged hills she wander,
    • If she haste the vale along,
    • Pinions seem to flutter yonder,
    • And the air is fill’d with song;
    • With the glow of youth still playing,
    • Joyous vigor in each limb,
    • One in silence is delaying,
    • She alone ’tis blesses him.
    • Love, thou art too fair, I ween!
    • Fairer I have never seen!
    • From the heart full easily
    • Blooming flowers are cull’d by thee.
    • If I think: “Oh, were it so,”
    • Bone and marrow seem to glow!
    • If rewarded by her love,
    • Can I greater rapture prove?
    • And still fairer is the bride,
    • When in me she will confide,
    • When she speaks and lets me know
    • All her tale of joy and woe.
    • All her lifetime’s history
    • Now is fully known to me.
    • Who in child or woman e’er
    • Soul and body found so fair?