The Sorrows of Young Werther - Early June Interlude
No letters from Werther this week. Instead - a summer love poem
IN SUMMER
How plain and height
With dewdrops are bright!
How pearls have crown'd
The plants all around!
How sighs the breeze
Thro' thicket and trees!
How loudly in the sun's clear rays
The sweet birds carol forth their lays!
But, ah! above,
Where saw I my love,
Within her room,
Small, mantled in gloom,
Enclosed around,
Where sunlight was drown'd,
How little there was earth to me,
With all its beauteous majesty!
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1815
From The Poems of Goethe, Translated in the Original Metres by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Collected and translated by Edgar A. Bowring, 1853.
Thanks to Project Gutenberg and Distributed Proofreaders for providing the text for this work of public domain literature - and many, many others.