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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  Call to Joy

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

Call to Joy

By Ludwig Heinrich Christoph Hölty (1748–1776)

Translation of Charles Timothy Brooks

AWAY with pouting and with pining,

So long as youth and springtime bloom!

Why, when life’s morning sun is shining,

Why should the brow be clothed in gloom?

On every road the Pleasures greet us,

As through life’s pilgrimage we roam;

With wreaths of flowers they come to meet us

And lead us onward to our home.

The rivulet purls and plays as lightly

As when it danced to Eden’s breeze;

The lovely moon still beams as brightly

As when she shone through Adam’s trees.