dots-menu
×
Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Homage

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Homage

By Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty (1748–1776)

O YE beauties,

All my duties

Pay I till my death,

Song-strains while upraising;

Ever till my death

All your virtues praising.

Ye, O good ones,

Joy-imbued ones,

Give life its sweet guise,

Man an angel making,

And a paradise

Of a world law-breaking.

Who the blisses

Of true kisses

Never tasted hath,

Wanders like one fleeing

O’er life’s beaten path,—

Is an unborn being.

Who the blisses

Of true kisses

Fully tasted hath,

Glows with Heaven’s brightness,

And along his path

Rose-groves spring in lightness.