No More Learning

Reeds in a trice are sprouting and rustling in murmuring breezes:

"Midas, o Midas the King--bears the ears of an ass! "

Mine is a secret more pleasant, but even more difficult keeping:

Out of abundance of heart eagerly speaketh my mouth.

None of my ladyfriends dare I confide in, for they would but chide me;

Nor any gentleman friend, lest he be rival to me.

Rapture proclaim to the grove, to the echoing cliffs perorate it?

One can do that if one's young, or if one's lonely enough.

I to hexameters tell, in pentameters I will confide it:

During the day she was joy, happiness all the night long.

Courted by so many suitors, avoided the snares that were set her

Now by one bolder than I, now by another in guile,

Cleverly, daintily, always slipped past them, and sure of the byways,

Comes to her lover's embrace, where he so eagerly waits.

Luna! Don't rise yet. She's coming, and must not be seen by the neighbor!

Breezes, rustle the leaves: muffle the sound of her feet.

And as for you, little poems, o grow and flower, your blossoms

Cradling themselves in the air, tepid and soft with love's breath.

Wafting, betray to Quirites, as Midas' reeds did with cheap gossip,

One happy couple in love, and their sweet secret, at last.




XXIV

I in the back of the garden, the last of the gods, in a corner,

Ineptly formed, must I stand. Evil the inroads of time.
Cucumber vines grow entwining about this primeval lingam,

Cracking it almost in two under the weight of the fruit.

Faggots are heaped all about me against the cold of the winter,

Which I so hate for the crows settling then down on my head,

Which they befoul very shamefully. Summer's no better: the servants

Empty their bowels and show insolent, naked behinds.

Filth, above and below! I was clearly in danger of turning

Into filth myself, toadstool, rotten wood!

Now, by your efforts, O noblest of artists, I shall recover

With fellow gods my just place. And it's no more than my due.

Jupiter's throne, so dishonestly won, it was I who secured it:

Color and ivory, marble and bronze, not to mention the poems.

Now, all intelligent men look upon me in kindness. They like to

Form their own image of me, just as the poet has done.

Nor do the girls take offense when they see me--by no means the matrons.

None finds me ugly today, though I am monstrously strong.

Half a foot long, as reward, your glorious rod (dear poet)

Proudly shall strut from your loins, when but your dearest commands,

Nor shall your member grow weary until you've enjoyed the full dozen

Artful positions the great poet Philainis describes.




ABOUT THE ELEGIES


Goethe cultivated a special, italianate hand for this portfolio of
twenty-four "elegies," so called because he was emulating the elegiasts
of Imperial Rome, Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus. The Elegies have
never before been published as here, together in the cyclical form of
their original conception. Experts even denied that the two priapeia (I
& XXIV) were by Goethe at all, although they are in the same hand as the
rest.