It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf.

quote by H.L. Mencken
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy! | In Romanian

There are devotees of Goethe, of the Eddas, of the late song of the Nibelungen; my fate has been Shakespeare. As it still is, though in a way that no one could have foreseen—no one save one man. Daniel Thorpe, who has just recently died in Pretoria. There is another man, too, whose face I have never seen.

Jorge Luis Borges in Shakespeare's Memory (1983), translated by Andrew Hurley
Added by Dan Costinaş
Comment! | Vote! | Copy! | In Spanish | In Romanian

Sometimes when reading Goethe I have a paralyzing suspicion that he is trying to be funny.

quote by Guy Davenport
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Science does not know its debt to imagination. Goethe did not believe that a great naturalist could exist without this faculty.

quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

quote by George Steiner
Added by Lucian Velea
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

My Heart On Fire

As I read these Sturm-und-Drang
lines penned by Goethe, I feel my
heart on fire - I used to hate that
he had to leave the next day

I refused to read this poem again –
but today I know that dreams are
safe, I can read passionate de-
clarations without fear

The moment lives forever in his heart
to set fire to mine – every time I read
his fervent poem, nobody need ever
know what I am dreaming about…

“Willkommen und Abschied

In meinen Adern welches Feuer!
In meinem Herzen welche Glut! …

[...] Read more

poem by Margaret Alice Second
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

I Fru Tesdorphs Stambog

Hvor Luther talte og hvor Goethe sang,
I Nabolandet gik din Vuggegænge,
Hvor Bølgen bruser høit om Dannevang,
Dig blomstre Livets Rose frisk og længe!

poem by Hans Christian Andersen
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Memorial Verses

Goethe in Weimar sleeps, and Greece,
Long since, saw Byron's struggle cease.
But one such death remain'd to come;
The last poetic voice is dumb--
We stand to-day by Wordsworth's tomb.

When Byron's eyes were shut in death,
We bow'd our head and held our breath.
He taught us little; but our soul
Had felt him like the thunder's roll.
With shivering heart the strife we saw
Of passion with eternal law;
And yet with reverential awe
We watch'd the fount of fiery life
Which served for that Titanic strife.

When Goethe's death was told, we said:
Sunk, then, is Europe's sagest head.
Physician of the iron age,
Goethe has done his pilgrimage.

[...] Read more

poem by Matthew Arnold
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Lyric Simplicity (Revised)

When I write a poem it comes from the heart
It is the place for a really good start
What I have written is impetuous in its purpose
Trying to make sense and not be a bore
Fancy words are not at my core
Days and months go by and to my great frustration
My mind goes blank without information
But then it happens and the words just flow
The spirit soars and my heart is aglow
I am no Pablo Neruda, Rilke, nor Goethe or Keats
I have to go on writing spreading my own seeds.

poem by Ingeborg von Finsterwalde
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Love And Desire

'Love and desire are the spirit's wings to great deeds.'
Johanne Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

there is no denial to this
principle
now that there is boredom
there is a need
for you to realize this
matter,
alright, you are love
i am not, but i can be
at most
a moment of desire

there is a bird with one
broken wing
let it still soar the skies
before it finally dies

poem by Ric S. Bastasa
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Too Many Errands

TOO MANY ERRANDS

Too many errands
No time for a poem.

A Poem takes time.
Amichai wrote
Returned years later
To perfect.
Rilke waited in silence for years
Until the ripened fruit dropped.
Goethe finished only at the end of his long life
What he had begun at the beginning.
A poem takes time.
Perhaps for some of us
Even a lifetime will not be enough.

As I now desperate
At the end of a long distracted day
Hurry these lines down.

poem by Shalom Freedman
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Once Upon an August Dreamy

Once upon an August dreamy
I saw a flat plane very sphery
I could not imagine the simple
Deck ducks danced in a drizzle.

I dreamed of the impossible
The perceptible invisible
Paris moved to Guatemala
Goethe wrote the Kalevala.

Once upon a winter bleary
I saw the world seamy, creamy
The yellow a purple colour
The mirror in misdemeanour.

I dreamed of the impossible
The pope became infallible
Vendors sold plenty of things
Rag rings and American kings.

poem by Paul Hartal
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

The Iniquities of Orndinance

I followed down a wash
My boots a little too tight;
Winding up with a deicious peace
And an angry blister.

It was on a bombing range,
Yuam County, Arizona,
Where even as an American citizen
I was tagged, watched and ostrasized.

You know about the mountain lion
With which I locked eyes there;
The she scampered off into the barrens
Double-time.

Later, on the highway looking back,
That mountain exploded,
The lion vaporiized along with my trail:

"Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least."

[...] Read more

poem by Stan Petrovich
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Why you so inquisitive of my whereabouts?

My night school's still dark
and the road I walk
Tar always black!
On the way,
I see rare night flowers,
They too have pearly white teeth
when they smile?
O the white Goddess
as passing clouds.
The white board in the gloomy class
Colored teacher writes on
with a piece of black chalk
A poem to recite;
'When forget-me-not
covers the old pauper's graveyard
Everybody thinks
It's the garden of Eden?
But in cruel Autumn
When the flowers withered
It's still the pauper's graveyard? '

[...] Read more

poem by Nimal Dunuhinga
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Darkness Unto Darkness!

'over the hilltops,
silence,
among all the treetops
you hardly feel
a breath moving.
the birds fall silent in the woods.
simply wait! Soon
you too will be silent.'

Goethe

a knock on the door,
Hermes,
the messenger,
come to gather and disperse!

we run like maddened chickens,
to escape the mossy hands
of the grave.

[...] Read more

poem by Eric Cockrell
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Voyage around the Square Root of Minus One

I often heard
that while the sciences concern themselves
with objective truths
the arts deal with subjective phenomena.

Many years ago I held the same view,
but later came to the conclusion
that this is just a well-combed popular myth.

It is an untenable credo
because the sharp separation
of the arts and sciences is a rigid
and arbitrary mandate, full of holes.

Although all subjects have their specificities,
at the same time they also share
many common traits with each other.

There is art in science and science in art.

[...] Read more

poem by Paul Hartal
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Let the Light Enter

"The dying words of Goethe."

"Light! more light! the shadows deepen,
And my life is ebbing low,
Throw the windows widely open:
Light! more light! before I go.

"Softly let the balmy sunshine
Play around my dying bed,
E'er the dimly lighted valley
I with lonely feet must tread.

"Light! more light! for Death is weaving
Shadows 'round my waning sight,
And I fain would gaze upon him
Through a stream of earthly light."

Not for greater gifts of genius;
Not for thoughts more grandly bright,

[...] Read more

poem by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Mephistopheles Perverted

(Or Goethe for the Times)
ONCE long ago lived a Flea
Who kept such a fine, fat King,
Not that he held with royalty,
But more for the appearance of the thing,
And gave his Majesty to hold
(Such pageantries are far too few)
A sword of ruby-hilted gold
That possibly might hack a cheese in two;
But lest this glory might begin
To prove the regency too far,
His thunderbolt they made of tin,
And changed his godship for another Star.
Thus when the Monarch drove abroad,
With stars like buttons round his chest,
God-fearing Fleas would all applaud,
And alien Lice be grudgingly impressed.
Such relics every Flea must flaunt,
If only as the final trump
That mocks Materialism's taunt,

[...] Read more

poem by Kenneth Slessor
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

To Baynard Taylor

To range, deep-wrapt, along a heavenly height,
O'erseeing all that man but undersees;
To loiter down lone alleys of delight,
And hear the beating of the hearts of trees,
And think the thoughts that lilies speak in white
By greenwood pools and pleasant passages;

With healthy dreams a-dream in flesh and soul,
To pace, in mighty meditations drawn,
From out the forest to the open knoll
Where much thyme is, whence blissful leagues of lawn
Betwixt the fringing woods to southward roll
By tender inclinations; mad with dawn,

Ablaze with fires that flame in silver dew
When each small globe doth glass the morning-star,
Long ere the sun, sweet-smitten through and through
With dappled revelations read afar,
Suffused with saintly ecstasies of blue
As all the holy eastern heavens are, --

[...] Read more

poem by Sidney Lanier
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!

Lines (With A Volume Of The Author's Poems Sent To M.R.C.)

Go, Verse, nor let the grass of tarrying grow
Beneath thy feet iambic. Southward go
O'er Thamesis his stream, nor halt until
Thou reach the summit of a suburb hill
To lettered fame not unfamiliar: there
Crave rest and shelter of a scholiast fair,
Who dwelleth in a world of old romance,
Magic emprise and faery chevisaunce.
Tell her, that he who made thee, years ago,
By northern stream and mountain, and where blow
Great breaths from the sea-sunset, at this day
One half thy fabric fain would rase away;
But she must take thee faults and all, my Verse,
Forgive thy better and forget thy worse.
Thee, doubtless, she shall place, not scorned, among
More famous songs by happier minstrels sung;--
In Shakespeare's shadow thou shalt find a home,
Shalt house with melodists of Greece and Rome,
Or awed by Dante's wintry presence be,
Or won by Goethe's regal suavity,

[...] Read more

poem by William Watson
Added by Poetry Lover
Comment! | Vote! | Copy!