To Goethe 21
Will they blot also out your name
Because you praise
All works of men that shrine the flame
Of beauty’s ways,
Wherever men have proved them great,
Nor, drunk with pride,
Saw but a single swollen State
And naught beside,
Nor dreamed of drilling Europe’s mind
With threat and blow
The way professors have designed
Genius should go?
Or shall a people rise at length
And see and shake
The fetters from its giant strength,
And grandly break
This pedantry of feud and force
To man untrue
Thundering and blundering on its course
To death and rue?
