As You Like It
Fair daffodils, we weep to seeYou haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain'd his noon.
Stay, stay.
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even song
And, having pray'd together, we
Will go with you along.
We have short time to stay, as you
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry.
Away
Like to the summer's rain,
Or as the pearls of morning's dew
Ne'er to be found again.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
TO LUNA
SISTER of the earliest light,
Type of loveliness in sorrow,
Silver mists thy radiance borrow,
Even as they cross thy sight.
When thou comest to the sky,
In their dusky hollows waken,
Spirits that are sad, forsaken,
Birds that shun the day, and I.
Looking downward far and wide,
Hidden things thou dost discover.
Luna! help a hapless lover,
Lift him kindly to thy side!
Aided by thy friendly beams,
Let him through the lattice peeping,
Look into the room where, sleeping,
Lies the maiden of his dreams.
Ah, I see her! Now I gaze,
Bending in a trance Elysian,
And I strain my inmost vision,
And I gather all thy rays.
Bright and brighter yet I see
Charms no envious robes encumber;
And she draws me to her slumber
As Endymion once drew thee.
Note:John Storer Cobb's English translation of 'To Luna' was first published in Goethe: Poetical Works, vol. 1. Boston: Francis A Niccolls & Company, 1902.
Rabindranath Tagore
WHEN the heart is hard and parched up,
come upon me with a shower of mercy.
When grace is lost from life, come with a burst of song.
When tumultuous work raises its din on all
sides shutting me out from beyond,
come to me, my lord of silence,with thy peace and rest.
When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king, and come with the ceremony of a king.
When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust,
O thou holy one, thou wakeful, come with thy light and thy thunder.
Rabindranath Tagore
LET all the strains of joy mingle in my last song-the joy that
makes the earth flow over in the riotous excess of the grass,
the joy that sets the twin brothers, life and death,
dancing over the wide world,
the joy that sweeps in with the tempest,
shaking and waking all life with laughter,
the joy that sits still with its tears of the open red lotus of pain,
and the joy that throws everything it has upon the dust,
and knows not a word.
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