TO THE KIND READER

No one talks more than a Poet;
Fain he’d have the people know it.

Praise or blame he ever loves;
None in prose confess an error,
Yet we do so, void of terror,

In the Muses’ silent groves.
What I err’d in, what corrected,
What I suffer’d, what effected,

To this wreath as flow’rs belong;
For the aged, and the youthful,
And the vicious, and the truthful,

All are fair when viewed in song.

Johan Wolfgang von Goethe (written age 51)

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe  Germany  (1749-1832)

Bowring, Edgar Alfred (Translated by) (1988) The Poems of Goethe, Translated in the Original Metres  On-line  http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1287 21  TO THE KIND READER