1775.
-----
The bliss of sorrow.

Never dry, never dry,

Tears that eternal love sheddeth! 
How dreary, how dead doth the world still appear,
When only half-dried on the eye is the tear!

Never dry, never dry,

  Tears that unhappy love sheddeth!

1789.*
-----
The Wanderer’s night-song.

Thou who comest from on high,

Who all woes and sorrows stillest,
Who, for twofold misery,

Hearts with twofold balsam fillest,
Would this constant strife would cease!

What are pain and rapture now? 
Blissful Peace,

To my bosom hasten thou!

1789.*
-----
The same.

[Written at night on the Kickelhahn, a hill in the forest of Ilmenau, on the walls of a little hermitage where Goethe composed the last act of his Iphigenia.]

HUSH’D on the hill

  Is the breeze;

Scarce by the zephyr

  The trees

Softly are press’d;
The woodbird’s asleep on the bough. 
Wait, then, and thou

Soon wilt find rest.

1783.
-----
The Hunter’s even-song.

The plain with still and wand’ring feet,

And gun full-charged, I tread,
And hov’ring see thine image sweet,

Thine image dear, o’er head.

In gentle silence thou dost fare

Through field and valley dear;
But doth my fleeting image ne’er

To thy mind’s eye appear?

His image, who, by grief oppress’d,

Roams through the world forlorn,
And wanders on from east to west,

Because from thee he’s torn?

When I would think of none but thee,

Mine eyes the moon survey;
A calm repose then steals o’er me,

But how, ’twere hard to say.

1776,*
-----
To the moon.

Bush and vale thou fill’st again

With thy misty ray,
And my spirit’s heavy chain

Castest far away.

Thou dost o’er my fields extend

Thy sweet soothing eye,
Watching like a gentle friend,

O’er my destiny.

Vanish’d days of bliss and woe

Haunt me with their tone,
Joy and grief in turns I know,

As I stray alone.

Stream beloved, flow on! flow on!

Ne’er can I be gay! 
Thus have sport and kisses gone,

Truth thus pass’d away.

Once I seem’d the lord to be

Of that prize so fair! 
Now, to our deep sorrow, we

Can forget it ne’er.

Murmur, stream, the vale along,

Never cease thy sighs;
Murmur, whisper to my song

Answering melodies!

When thou in the winter’s night

Overflow’st in wrath,
Or in spring-time sparklest bright,