Margaret’s Song

 

There was a king in Thule, 

True even to the grave; 

To whom his dying mistress 

A golden beaker gave. 

At every feast he drained it, 

Naught was to him so dear, 

And often as he drained it, 

Gush’d from his eyes the tear. 

When death came, unrepining 

His cities o’er he told; 

All to his heir resigning, 

Except his cup of gold. 

With many a knightly vassal 

At a royal feast sat he, 

In yon proud hall ancestral, 

In his castle o’er the sea. 

Up stood the jovial monarch, 

And quaff’d his last life’s glow, 

Then hurled the hallow’d goblet 

Into the flood below. 

He saw it splashing, drinking, 

And plunging in the sea; 

His eyes meanwhile were sinking, 

And never again drank he.

“Margaret’s Song” by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) in “Faust. Part I.”