Chorus of DRUIDS.

As from the smoke is freed the blaze,

So let our faith burn bright! 
And if they crush our golden ways,

Who e’er can crush Thy light?

1799.
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Odes.

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These are the most singular of all the Poems of Goethe, and to many will appear so wild and fantastic, as to leave anything but a pleasing impression.  Those at the beginning, addressed to his friend Behrisch, were written at the age of eighteen, and most of the remainder were composed while he was still quite young.  Despite, however, the extravagance of some of them, such as the Winter Journey over the Hartz Mountains, and the Wanderer’s Storm-Song, nothing can be finer than the noble one entitled Mahomet’s Song, and others, such as the Spirit Song’ over the Waters, The God-like, and, above all, the magnificent sketch of Prometheus, which forms part of an unfinished piece bearing the same name, and called by Goethe a ‘Dramatic Fragment.’

To my friend.

[These three Odes are addressed to a certain Behrisch, who was tutor to Count Lindenau, and of whom Goethe gives an odd account at the end of the Seventh Book of his Autobiography.]

First ode.

Transplant the beauteous tree! 
Gardener, it gives me pain;
A happier resting-place
Its trunk deserved.

Yet the strength of its nature
To Earth’s exhausting avarice,
To Air’s destructive inroads,
An antidote opposed.

See how it in springtime
Coins its pale green leaves! 
Their orange-fragrance
Poisons each flyblow straight.

The caterpillar’s tooth
Is blunted by them;
With silv’ry hues they gleam
In the bright sunshine,

Its twigs the maiden
Fain would twine in
Her bridal-garland;
Youths its fruit are seeking.

See, the autumn cometh! 
The caterpillar
Sighs to the crafty spider,—­
Sighs that the tree will not fade.

Hov’ring thither
From out her yew-tree dwelling,
The gaudy foe advances
Against the kindly tree,

And cannot hurt it,
But the more artful one
Defiles with nauseous venom
Its silver leaves;

And sees with triumph
How the maiden shudders,
The youth, how mourns he,
On passing by.

Transplant the beauteous tree! 
Gardener, it gives me pain;
Tree, thank the gardener
Who moves thee hence!

1767.
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Second ode.

Thou go’st!  I murmur—­
Go! let me murmur. 
Oh, worthy man,
Fly from this land!

Deadly marshes,
Steaming mists of October
Here interweave their currents,
Blending for ever.

Noisome insects
Here are engender’d;
Fatal darkness
Veils their malice.

The fiery-tongued serpent,
Hard by the sedgy bank,
Stretches his pamper’d body,
Caress’d by the sun’s bright beams.