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CELEBRITY. - 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.


CELEBRITY.

    • ON bridges small and bridges great
    • Stand Nepomuks in ev’ry state,
    • Of bronze, wood, painted, or of stone,
    • Some small as dolls, some giants grown;
    • Each passer must worship before Nepomuk,
    • Who to die on a bridge chanc’d to have the ill luck.
    • When once a man with head and ears
    • A saint in people’s eyes appears,
    • Or has been sentenced piteously
    • Beneath the hangman’s hand to die,
    • He’s as a noted person priz’d,
    • In portrait is immortaliz’d.
    • Engravings, woodcuts, are supplied,
    • And through the world spread far and wide.
    • Upon them all is seen his name,
    • And ev’ry one admits his claim;
    • Even the image of the Lord
    • Is not with greater zeal ador’d.
    • Strange fancy of the human race!
    • Half sinner frail, half child of grace
    • We see Herr Werther of the story
    • In all the pomp of woodcut glory.
    • His worth is first made duly known
    • By having his sad features shown
    • At ev’ry fair the country round;
    • In ev’ry alehouse too they’re found.
    • His stick is pointed by each dunce:
    • “The ball would reach his brain at once!”
    • And each says, o’er his beer and bread:
    • “Thank Heav’n that ’tis not we are dead!”