Translations from Goethe
I
Over every hill
All is still;
In no leaf of any tree
Can you see
The motion of a breath.
Every bird has ceased its song,
Wait; and thou too, ere long,
Shall be quiet in death.
II
Who ne’er his bread with tears hath ate,
Who never through the sad night hours
Weeping upon his bed hath sate,
He knows not you, you heavenly powers.
Forth into life you bid us go,
And into guilt you let us fall,
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Hidden Love
O let me love my love unto myself alone,
And know my knowledge to the world unknown;
No witness to my vision call,
Beholding, unbeheld of all;
And worship Thee, with Thee withdrawn apart,
Whoe’er, Whate’er Thou art,
Within the closest veil of mine own inmost heart.
What is it then to me
If others are inquisitive to see?
Why should I quit my place to go and ask
If other men are working at their task?
Leave my own buried roots to go
And see that brother plants shall grow;
And turn away from Thee, O Thou most Holy Light,
To look if other orbs their orbits keep aright,
Around their proper sun,
Deserting Thee, and being undone.
O let me love my love unto myself alone,
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
The Dream Land
I
To think that men of former days
In naked truth deserved the praise
Which, fain to have in flesh and blood
An image of imagined good,
Poets have sung and men received,
And all too glad to be deceived,
Most plastic and most inexact,
Posterity has told for fact;
To say what was, was not as we,
This also is a vanity.
II
Ere Agamemnon, warriors were,
Ere Helen, beauties equalling her,
Brave ones and fair, whom no one knows,
And brave or fair as these or those.
The commonplace whom daily we
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Genesis XXIV
Who is this man
that walketh in the field,
O Eleazar,
steward to my lord?
And Eleazar
answered her and said,
Daughter of Bethuel,
it is other none
But my lord Isaac,
son unto my lord,
Who, as his wont is,
walketh in the field,
In the hour of evening,
meditating there.
Therefore Rebekah
basted where she sat,
And from her camel
’lighting to the earth,
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
A Protest
LIGHT words they were, and lightly, falsely said;
She heard them, and she started,—and she rose,
As in the act to speak; the sudden thought
And unconsider’d impulse led her on.
In act to speak she rose, but with the sense
Of all the eyes of that mix’d company
Now suddenly turn’d upon her, some with age
Harden’d and dull’d, some cold and critical;
Some in whom vapors of their own conceit,
As moist malarious mists the heavenly stars,
Still blotted out their good, the best at best
By frivolous laugh and prate conventional
All too untun’d for all she thought to say,—
With such a thought the mantling blood to her cheek
Flush’d up, and o’er-flush’d itself, blank night her soul
Made dark, and in her all her purpose swoon’d.
She stood as if for sinking. Yet anon,
With recollections clear, august, sublime,
Of God’s great truth, and right immutable,
Which, as obedient vassals, to her mind
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Easter Day, II
So in the sinful streets, abstracted and alone,
I with my secret self held communing of mine own.
So in the southern city spake the tongue
Of one that somewhat overwildly sung,
But in a later hour I sat and heard
Another voice that spake another graver word.
Weep not, it bade, whatever hath been said,
Though He be dead, He is not dead.
In the true creed
He is yet risen indeed;
Christ is yet risen.
Weep not beside His tomb,
Ye women unto whom
He was great comfort and yet greater grief;
Nor ye, ye faithful few that wont with Him to roam,
Seek sadly what for Him ye left, go hopeless to your home;
Nor ye despair, ye sharers yet to be of their belief;
Though He be dead, He is not dead,
Nor gone, though fled,
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
An Incident
’Twas on a sunny summer day
I trod a mighty city’s street,
And when I started on my way
My heart was full of fancies sweet;
But soon, as nothing could be seen,
But countenances sharp and keen,
Nought heard or seen around but told
Of something bought or something sold,
And none that seemed to think or care
That any save himself was there,
Full soon my heart began to sink
With a strange shame and inward pain,
For I was sad within to think
Of this absorbing love of gain,
And various thoughts my bosom tost;
When suddenly my path there crossed,
Locked hand in hand with one another,
A little maiden and her brother
A little maiden, and she wore
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough (1836)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Come, Poet, come!
Come, Poet, come!
A thousand labourers ply their task,
And what it tends to scarcely ask,
And trembling thinkers on the brink
Shiver, and know not how to think.
To tell the purport of their pain,
And what our silly joys contain;
In lasting lineaments pourtray
The substance of the shadowy day;
Our real and inner deeds rehearse,
And make our meaning clear in verse:
Come, Poet, come! for but in vain
We do the work or feel the pain,
And gather up the seeming gain,
Unless before the end thou come
To take, ere they are lost, their sum.
Come, Poet, come!
To give an utterance to the dumb,
And make vain babblers silent, come;
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Duty
Duty that’s to say, complying,
With whate’er’s expected here;
On your unknown cousin’s dying,
Straight be ready with the tear;
Upon etiquette relying,
Unto usage nought denying,
Lend your waist to be embraced,
Blush not even, never fear;
Claims of kith and kin connection,
Claims of manners honour still,
Ready money of affection
Pay, whoever drew the bill.
With the form conforming duly,
Senseless what it meaneth truly,
Go to church the world require you,
To balls the world require you too,
And marry papa and mamma desire you,
And your sisters and schoolfellows do.
Duty ’tis to take on trust
What things are good, and right, and just;
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!
Two Moods
Ah, blame him not because he’s gay!
That he should smile, and jest, and play
But shows how lightly he can bear,
How well forget that load which, where
Thought is, is with it, and howe’er
Dissembled, or indeed forgot,
Still is a load, and ceases not.
This aged earth that each new spring
Comes forth so young, so ravishing
In summer robes for all to see,
Of flower, and leaf, and bloomy tree,
For all her scarlet, gold, and green,
Fails not to keep within unseen
That inner purpose and that force
Which on the untiring orbit’s course
Around the sun, amidst the spheres
Still bears her thro’ the eternal years.
Ah, blame the flowers and fruits of May,
And then blame him because he’s gay.
[...] Read more
poem by Arthur Hugh Clough
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!