Faust I 640-651

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Imagination, once a flight sublime
That soared in hope beyond the swirl of time,
Now, as each joy is drowned beyond redress,
Sinks down inside us into pettiness:
Care makes its nest in the heart’s deepest hole
And secretly torments the soul;
Its restless rocking motion mars our mind’s content.
Its masks are ever-changing, it appears
As house and home, as wife and child, it will invent
Wounds, poisons, fires and floods—from all
These blows we flinch before they ever fall,
And for imagined losses shed continual tears.

translated by: David Luke