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4 Come then , my friends , and whether on your way The load of life oppresses more and more ; Or whether some new blessing " , as you stray , Strews flowers and golden fruits your paths before ^* United we shall meet the coming day , And wander joyful till our journey ' s o ' er : And even when our children for us sadden—Our love shall last their after-lives to gladden—' Goethe has wisely placed his songs and ballads in the front of his works , since , after all , those are the classes of his poems which enjoy the most extensive and undisturbed popularity . — They are on the lips and in the hearts of every one , and are distinguished by that rare union of perfection of style which will give currency even to common thoughts , —with originality of invention and profundity of thought , which would render even excusable imperfections of language .
To the foreign reader they may be recommended by their simplicity and facility . They may be put into the hands of learners as school exercises . In general , there is not in the German , as in other modern tongues , a poetic diction which forms almost a distinct language . The student of the Italian , for instance , who has even mastered
the archaisms of Dante and Petrarch , has a painful labour to encounter when he undertakes the modern poets , in familiarizing himself with the arid abstractions of the rhetorical ^ Alfieri , the subtle refinements enveloped in the exquisite irony of Parini , and the wild flights of the more poetical Monti;—it must be owned he is rewarded for his pains .
The poetical diction of Goethe , and of the school of poetry which he has established , is framed , though unconsciously , on the theory developed by Mr . Wordsworth in the polemical preface to his poems—a theory on which even Lord Byron has formed his style , though , in other important particulars , the very antipodes of Wordsworth , and to which he owes a larger portion of his popularity than his admirers would acknowledge .
The diction and style of Goethe will , therefore , present no difficulties of language . The matter , indeed , is not unfrequently wrought into the form of a poetical riddle , and there is so large a portion of Goethe ' s poems which may be thus entitled , that we shall be excused a digression . What we mean by a poetical riddle may be explained by a reference to one of the most delightful of Mr . Coleridge ' s small poems : —
* Myrtle-leaf that , ill-besped , Pinest in the gladsome ray , Soiled beneath the common tread . Far from thy protecting spray !' Nothing can surpass the beauty of the whole description ; and i * $ really pity the unhappy reader who should want to know what it
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Goethe ' s Works . S 6 B
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 363, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/3/
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