The Sorrows of Young Werther - November Interlude II
The third poem to fill this second long gap between letters from Werther
BY THE RIVER
Flow on, ye lays so loved, so fair,
On to Oblivion's ocean flow!
May no rapt boy recall you e'er,
No maiden in her beauty's glow!
My love alone was then your theme,
But now she scorns my passion true.
Ye were but written in the stream;
As it flows on, then, flow ye too!
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1789
From The Poems of Goethe, Translated in the Original Metres by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Collected and translated by Edgar A. Bowring, 1853.
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