Poetical Remains of the Late Mrs Hemans/Lot of Man and Woman compared by Iphigenia

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For other versions of this work, see Lot of Man and Woman Compared by Iphigenia.

III.

LOT OF MAN AND WOMAN COMPARED BY IPHIGENIA.

Man by the battle's hour immortalized
May fall, yet leave his name to living song;
But of forsaken woman's countless tears,
What recks the after-world? the poet's voice
Tells naught of all the slow, sad, weary days
And long, long nights, through which the lonely soul
Poured itself forth, consumed itself away,
In passionate adjurings, vain desires,
And ceaseless weepings for the early lost,
The loved and vanished!