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Hikmet Nameh. - 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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Hikmet Nameh.

BOOK OF PROVERBS.

  • TALISMANS throughout the book I’d scatter,
  • For an equipoise they make.
  • Who the credulous pin will take,
  • Opening will find, surely find good matter.
  • From this day, from this night
  • Ask for naught,
  • Only what the yesterdays have brought.
  • The sea is flowing ever,
  • The land retains it never.
  • Be stirring, man, while yet the day is clear;
  • The night when none can work fast draweth near.
  • When the heavy-laden sigh,
  • Deeming help and hope gone by,
  • Oft, with healing power is heard,
  • Comfort-fraught, a kindly word.
  • How vast is mine inheritance, how glorious and sublime!
  • For time mine own possession is, the land I till is time!
  • Enweri saith,—ne’er lived a man more true;
  • The deepest heart, the highest head he knew,—
  • “In ev’ry place and time thou’lt find availing
  • Uprightness, judgment, kindliness unfailing.”
  • Though the bards whom the Orient sun hath bless’d
  • Are greater than we who dwell in the west,
  • Yet in hatred of those whom our equals we find,
  • In this we’re not in the least behind.
  • Would we let our envy burst,
  • Feed its hunger fully first!
  • To keep our proper place,
  • We’ll show our bristles more;
  • With hawks men all things chase,
  • Except the savage boar.
  • By those who themselves more bravely have fought
  • A hero’s praise will be joyfully told.
  • The worth of man can only be taught
  • By those who have suffer’d both heat and cold.
    • “Wherefore is truth so far from our eyes,
    • Buried as though in a distant land?”
    • None at the proper moment are wise!
    • Could they properly understand,
    • Truth would appear in her own sweet guise,
    • Beauteous, gentle, and close at hand.
  • Why these inquiries make,
  • Where charity may flow?
  • Cast in the flood thy cake,—
  • Its eater, who will know?
  • Once when I a spider had kill’d,
  • Then methought: was’t right or wrong?
  • That we both to these times should belong,
  • This had God in His goodness will’d.
    • A man with households twain
    • Ne’er finds attention meet;
    • A house wherein two women reign
    • Is ne’er kept clean and neat.
    • Bless, thou dread Creator,
    • Bless this humble fane;
    • Man may build them greater,—
    • More they’ll not contain.
  • Let this house’s glory rise,
  • Handed to far ages down,
  • And the son his honor prize,
  • As the father his renown.
  • O’er the Mediterranean sea
  • Proudly hath the Orient sprung;
  • Who loves Hafis and knows him, he
  • Knows what Calderon hath sung.
  • If the ass that bore the Saviour
  • Were to Mecca driven, he
  • Would not alter, but would be
  • Still an ass in his behavior.
  • The flood of passion storms with fruitless strife,
  • ’Gainst the unvanquish’d solid land.
  • It throws poetic pearls upon the strand,
  • And thus is gain’d the prize of life.
  • When so many minstrels there are,
  • How it pains me, alas, to know it!
  • Who from the earth drives poetry far?
  • Who but the poet!
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