Poem of the Week – On the Lake by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Goethe is a name that should need no introduction. The preeminent thinker of his time, he mastered almost every trade that took his fancy. Goethe was a capable scientist, best-selling novelist, pioneering playwright, skilful painter, competent statesmen and celebrated poet, his intellectual record ranks alongside legacies as illustrious as Leonardo da Vinci’s, Benjamin Franklin’s and Nicola Tesla’s.
His influence changed the outlook of numerous Western philosophers, artists, writers and composers, from Freidrich Nietzsche and Gustav Mahler to George Eliot and Thomas Mann. His posthumous reputation has become synonymous with the concept of a polymath.
This week’s poem is entitled On the Lake and was written in 1775 when Goethe was twenty-five. He is said to have penned this short lyric as he set off for a tour of Switzerland in the company of a friend. Considered a key contributor to creating the romantic genre, Sturm and Drang, this week’s poem exhibits some of the traits that characterise that energetic and exalted phase in European literature.
A sudden comprehension of the harmonious connection between natural things compels the speaker to express his delight at the exuberance of life. Vitality shines and flows from stars to mountains, down to lacustrine waters and into ripening fruit. In mood as well as in rhythm, it has a rhapsodic effect.
We hope you enjoy this week’s poem as much as we did.
On the Lake by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (translated by Christopher Middleton)
And fresh nourishment, new blood
I suck from a world so free;
Nature, how gracious and how good,
Her breast she gives to me.
The ripples buoying up our boat
Keep rhythm to the oars,
And mountains up to heaven float
In cloud to meet our course.
Eyes, my eyes, why abject now?
Golden dreams, are you returning?
Dream, though gold, away with you:
Life is here and loving too.
Over the ripples twinkling
Star on hovering star,
Soft mists drink the circled
Towering world afar;
Dawn wind fans the shadedInlet with its wing,
And in the water mirrored
The fruit is ripening.
Enjoyed this poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Read the rest of the Poem of the Week archive here.