C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Prometheus
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)
B
With thunder-clouds,
And exercise thee, like a boy
Who thistles crops,
With smiting oaks and mountain-tops:
Yet must leave me standing
My own firm earth;
Must leave my cottage, which thou didst not build,
And my warm hearth,
Whose cheerful glow
Thou enviest me.
Under the sun, than you, gods!
Ye nourish scantily
With altar taxes
And with cold lip-service,
This your majesty;—
Would perish, were not
Children and beggars
Credulous fools.
And knew not whence or whither,
I would turn my ’wildered eye
To the sun, as if up yonder were
An ear to hear to my complaining—
A heart, like mine,
On the oppressed to feel compassion.
When I braved the Titans’ insolence?
Who rescued me from death,
From slavery?
Hast thou not all thyself accomplished,
Holy-glowing heart?
And, glowing, young, and good,
Most ignorantly thanked
The slumberer above there?
Hast thou the miseries lightened
Of the down-trodden?
Hast thou the tears ever banished
From the afflicted?
Have I not to manhood been molded
By omnipotent Time,
And by Fate everlasting,
My lords and thine?
I should grow weary of living,
And fly to the desert,
Since not all our
Pretty dream buds ripen?
In mine own image,—
A race to be like me,
To weep and to suffer,
To be happy and enjoy themselves,
To be careless of thee too,
As I!