The Musagetes

By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring, 1853)

Often in the winter-midnight
Pray'd I to the Muse's leaders:
"No celestial lamp is shining,
No sweet morning dawn is waking;
Bring me light, then, at the hour
When the late-born daylight slumbers,
That the quiet, lonely spirit
May be cheered by song or wisdom."

But they left me in my coldness,
And the winter passed in silence.
Then the spring came softly stealing,
And the nightingales came calling,
Singing sweet and sorrow-laden
From the thicket, through the darkness,
Filling all my soul with longing.
Yet no verse would form or follow;
In a dreamy, floating slumber,
I would listen to their weeping.

Then at last the summer wakened,
And at dawn, when I awoke, too,
Lo! my bedroom was invaded!
Not by Muses, bright and golden,
Not by birds of tender passion—
But by flies, the stinging insects!
With their sharp and ruthless buzzing,
Biting deep and driving forward,
Rousing me from under blankets.

And I cursed the tiny torment,
Yet I fled into the open,
Where the Muses stood in waiting,
Underneath the spreading beeches,
Ready for the summer's harvest.
So to these libell'd insects
Do I owe my song and morning!