The Works of J. W. von Goethe/Volume 9/Hartz Mountains
RIDE TO THE HARTZ IN WINTER.
[The following explanation is necessary in order to make this ode in any way intelligible. The poet is supposed to leave his companions, who are proceeding on a hunting expedition in winter, in order himself to pay a visit to a hypochondriacal friend, and also to see the mining in the Hartz mountains. The ode alternately describes, in a very fragmentary and peculiar way, the naturally happy disposition of the poet himself and the unhappiness of his friend; it pictures the wildness of the road and the dreariness of the prospect, which is relieved at one spot by the distant sight of a town, a very vague allusion to which is made in the third strophe; it recalls the hunting party on which his companions have gone: and, after an address to Love, concludes by a contrast between unexplored recesses of the highest peak of the Hartz and the metalliferous veins of its smaller brethren.]
Free as the hawk,
Which, on yon dark morning cloud-pile,
With soft spread pinion resting,
Looks out for prey,
Float my loose song!
Sure a God hath
Unto each his path
Fore-appointed,
Which the fortunate
Swift to happiest
Goal pursues:
But whom misfortune
Hath frozen to the heart,
He frets him vainly
Against the restraint of
The wire-woven cord, which
Soon shall the bitter scissors
Snap once for all.
To gloomy thicket
Rushes the reindeer wild,
And with the sparrows have
Long ago the rich folks
Into their swamps for shelter sunk.
Easy to follow the chariot,
When 'tis Fortune drives.
Just as the lumbering cart
Over the hard, smooth road rolls,
After a monarch's march.
But aside who fareth?
In the woods he loses his path;
Swiftly behind him
The boughs fly together,
The grass stands up again,
The desert o'erwhelms him.
Ah, but who healeth the pangs of
Him, whose balm becomes poison?
Who but hate for man
From the fulness of love hath drunk?
First despised, and now a despiser,
Wastes he secretly
All his own best worth,
Brooding over himself.
Is there on thy psalter,
Father of love, one tone
Which his ear would welcome?
Oh, then, quicken his heart!
Open his beclouded look
Over the thousand fountains
All around him thirsting there
In the desert.
Thou, who on each bestowest
Joys, a superabundant share,
Bless the brothers of the chase,
Out in search of wild beasts,
With danger-loving zeal of youth,
Eager to take life,
Late avengers of mischief,
Which for years hath defied the
Farmer's threatening cudgel.
But the lone wanderer wrap
In thy golden cloud-fleeces;
And wreathe with evergreen,
Till the summer roses be blowing,
The dripping ringlets,
O Love, of this thy poet!
With thy flickering torch thou
Lightest him on
Through the fords, in the night,
Over treacherous footing
On desolate commons.
With the thousand tints of the moon, thou
Smilest to his heart so!
With the bitter cold blast
Bearest him gloriously up.
Winter torrents down from the rocks roll
Into his anthems.
An altar of cheerfulest thanks
Seems to him the terrible summit's
Snow-hung, hoary crown,
Wreathed vdth rows of pale spirits
By the marvellous people.
Thou standest, with unexplored bosom
Mysteriously prominent,
Over the astonished world,
And lookest from the clouds there
Down on its riches and majesty,
Which thou from the veins of these thy brothers
Round thee here waterest.