Into ante-chambers going

Found the same, where folks philander With not wit enough for knowing Dirt of mice from coriander.

All the stumps of brooms reputing
Ill of brooms that sweep the floor;
These, so lusty, not computing

What brave brooms have been before.

And if men in parties sever

To despise each other keener,

Neither side can notice ever

That it wears the same demeanor.

And this boorish self-respecting

Have those very people rated, Who are slowest at detecting

How another's worth is weighted.

Germans with their friendship

Are too ready quite,
Bitterest of foe-ship

Still can be polite;

The softer they received me,
Fresher grew my spite ;

But no gloom aggrieved me
In morning or twilight.

Each must have his bite :

They greeted me, and hated

To death with all their might.

If a man is free from ails,

Straight to vex him runs the neighbor;

One whose quality prevails

Fain with stones they would belabor.

But if once he's fairly dead,

There begins a spendthrift giving
For a shaft above his head,
Trophy of his bitter living;
But then at reckoning up its debt
The mob is very clever :

It were thriftier to forget
The good man for ever.

This old world is ever nursing
Snobs with consequential rages;

"Tis all one to me conversing

With the tyrants, with the sages.

Since I found the narrow-minded

With the loudest brag would drive us,
And their brothers, the self-blinded,

Of our eyes would fain deprive us,

Wise and simpleton together

Have I left, for neither pleases,-
One has too sedate a weather,
Other tears himself to pieces.

Force and good-will, I am thinking,
Must secure in us a meeting,
Make the sun a little blinking,
And the shadow give a heating.

Hafis, too, and Ulrich Hutten,2
Had to keep at bay excesses
Of the brown and blue-cowled gentry:
Mine go round in Christian dresses.

"But who are the foes so bearish?"
Better not to specify;

For already in the parish

Have I come to grief thereby.

To copy me, correct, misunderstand,

For fully fifty years have people striven;
Methought then: learn by that how hast thou thriven,

How hast demeaned it in the Fatherland.

Hast blustered in thy time in genial rages
With wild, demonic younker-hordes, high-flying,
But year by year hast slowly been allying
Thyself to souls serener, to the sages.

On the good if thou dost rest,
Never will I blame thee;
Strivest thou toward the Best,
It does not defame thee!
Dost thou plant a quickset row
To keep thy good secluded?
I live free, and live, I trow,
Not at all deluded.

People on the whole are good,
Would remain far better,

Did not each the other's mood
Copy to the letter.

On the road is but one pace

All of us to tether:

Would we travel to a place,
Well, we go together.

Here and there, as on we move,

Much there is to thwart us;

No device to help in Love

Ever comrade taught us.

Gold and glory each will want
Only for the spending;
And the wine, the confidant,

Who sunders in the ending.

Hafis, too, has all this trash
In his verse redacted,

O'er each stupid trick and rash

Went his brains distracted.

And I see not it avails

Fleeing from the fashion:

Thou canst, when the worst assails,
Pull thy hair for passion.

Why pretend to force by phrasing3
What in silence only blows!
Mine to love the Good that's Beauty
Just as out of God it grows.

Some one love I; that is needful;
None I hate; must one be hated,

For that too can I be heedful,

Hate whole masses unabated.

Wouldst, however, know them nearer?

Right and Wrong-ward cast your sight; To their fancy what is dearer,

Probably is not the Right.