Tag Archives: Goethe

Poetry 95: Faust: First part by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,

Faust_und_Mephisto,_Stich_von_Tony_Johannot

You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons