Goethe's Faust / translated into English verse by Sir George Lefevre.

  • Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832.
Date:
1843
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Goethe's Faust / translated into English verse by Sir George Lefevre. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    52/222 (page 40)
    Prove more destructive than the plague. To thousands I the poison gave, They pass’d, and I survive instead, To hear them bless the murd'rous deed. Wagner. Why take such matters thus to heart? Does not an honest man enough, Who, in good conscience, doth impart What he was hound to learn in youth? If you your father’s name revere, In youth you’ll hold his precepts dear: Add you, as man, to wisdom’s store, Your son may yet attain to more. Faust. Happy the man, who doth suppose He can emerge from error’s sea; Man seeks th’ unknown, for what lie knows Doth prove of small utility. But let not, on the present good, Such melancholy thoughts intrude. See how the green-turf’d hamlets gleam In the sun’s last expiring beam ; Twinkling he fades, the day is gone, He hastens to another zone To gain new life. O had I wings to mount in air, And follow him in his career, See in eternal evening ray The tranquil earth before me lay. The vales reposing, hills in flames, And silv’ry, chang’d to golden streams.