Ye Ruins, dust of empires vanish’d,
Ye mountains, clad with countless
years,
From your great presence ne’er be
banish’d
Sad songs that live in earnest
ears:
Sad songs, the music of all sorrow,
Profound and calm as night’s
blue deep:
Accurst the dreams of any morrow
When man will feel he cannot
weep.
J.S.
* * * * *
GOETHE
Alas! on earth his marvels done,
The noble German bosom lies,
His fatherland’s Athenian son,
Amid the sage must largely
rise!
Amid the sage the generous race
Of soaring thought and steadfast
glow,
He breathes no more who gave a grace
To all our daily lot below.
He gave to man’s encumber’d
hours
The tuneful joys of truth
serene,
And twined our life’s neglected
flowers
With nature’s holiest
evergreen.
Alas! for him the soul of fire,
For him of fancy’s golden
rays,
For him whose aims ascended higher
Than all that won a nation’s
praise!
We pause and ask—Why gloom’d
the grave
For one of light so broadly
mild?
And wonder beauty could not save
From death’s deep night
her eager child.
But could the lyre be heard again,
Its widow’d notes would
seem to cry—
In all was he a man of men,
For them to live, like them
to die.
What life inspires ’twas his to
feel,
With ampler soul than all
beside;
What earth’s bright shows to few
reveal,
His art for all expanded wide.
With earnest heed from hour to hour,
Through all his years of striving
hope,
He fed his lamp, its light to shower
On paths where myriads dimly
grope.
He taught nankind by toil, by love,
To cheer the world that must
be theirs;
And ne’er to look for peace above,
By scorning earthly joys and
cares.
Ah! pages full of grief and fear,
But all attuned to melody,
Vesuvio’s flame reflected clear
In glassy seas of Napoli.
And on that sea we seem to float
In amber light, and catch
from far,
’Mid ocean’s boundless Voice,
the note
Of girl who hymns the evening-star.
The sweetest word, the melting tone,
The pictured wisdom bright
as day,
And Faust’s remorse, and Tasso’s
groan,
And Dorothea’s morning
lay,
Glad Egmont, light of Clara’s eyes,
Free Goetz, the warmth of
manhood’s noon,
And Mignon, all a tune of sighs,
And lorn Ottilia crush’d
so soon.
Ah! tale that tells the life of all
To lovelier truth by fancy
wrought,
And songs that e’en to us recall
The bliss a poet’s vision
caught!
All these are ours, yes, all—but
he.
And who that lives can find
a strain
Of worth like his the soul to free
From bonds of sublunary pain?