VIII
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, Clarke, Harry, and Taylor, Bayard
There was a King in Thule, Was faithful till the grave,— To whom his mistress, dying, A golden goblet gave. Naught was to him more precious; He drained it at every bout: His eyes with tears ran over, As oft as he drank thereout. When came his time of dying, The towns in his land he told, Naught else to his heir denying Except the goblet of gold. He sat at the royal banquet With his knights of high degree, In the lofty hall of his fathers In the Castle by the Sea. There stood the old carouser, And drank the last life-glow; And hurled the hallowed goblet Into the tide below. He saw it plunging and filling, And sinking deep in the sea: Then fell his eyelids forever, And never more drank he!
(She opens the press in order to arrange her clothes, and perceives the casket of jewels.)
How comes that lovely casket here to me? I locked the press, most certainly. ’Tis truly wonderful! What can within it be? Perhaps ’twas brought by some one as a pawn, And mother gave a loan thereon? And here there hangs a key to fit: I have a mind to open it. What is that? God in Heaven! Whence came Such things? Never beheld I aught so fair! Rich ornaments, such as a noble dame On highest holidays might wear! How would the pearl-chain suit my hair? Ah, who may all this splendor own?
(She adorns herself with the jewelry, and steps before the mirror.)
Were but the ear-rings mine, alone! One has at once another air. What helps one’s beauty, youthful blood? One may possess them, well and good; But none the more do others care. They praise us half in pity, sure: To gold still tends, On gold depends All, all! Alas, we poor!