I saw in letters and in poems,
His honored hand's laborious toil;
And many loving recollections,
Inquiry won me for my spoil.
Through every chamber, small and homely,
With holy reverence did I roam,
Where oft the gods in radiant concourse
Came thronging to their loved one's home.
By the bed stood I where the poet
In placid sleep his eyes reposed,
Till summoned to a nobler being
For the last time their lids he closed.
In reading of the holy places,
Henceforth have I a doubled zeal,
I have a being in the writing,
For all of it I know and feel.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] To explain this joke to the un-Germanized reader, it will be necessary to inform him that the title of Goethe's poem is "The Shepherd's Lament," wherein a shepherd, leaving his native hills, gives a lingering look up at the familiar mountain, and sings regretfully
"I have to the valley descended,
And how I cannot tell."
Herunter kommen, means also to decline, to fail, and upon this turns the joke.