CLIO

THE AGE

Now when the foreign judge had been by the minister questioned As to his people's distress, and how long their exile had lasted, Thus made answer the man: "Of no recent date are our sorrows; Since of the gathering bitter of years our people have drunken,−− Bitterness all the more dreadful because such fair hope had been blighted. Who will pretend to deny that his heart swelled high in his bosom, And that his freer breast with purer pulses was beating; When we beheld the new sun arise in his earliest splender, When of the rights of men we heard, which to all should be common, Were of a righteous equality told, and inspiriting freedom?

Every one hoped that then he should live his own life, and the fetters, Binding the various lands, appeared their hold to be loosing,−− Fetters that had in the hand of sloth been held and self−seeking. Looked not the eyes of all nations, throughout that calamitous season, Towards the world's capital city, for so it had long been considered, And of that glorious title was now, more than ever, deserving?

From
Hermann and Dorothea By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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