From The Songbook (1827), “Return home”

Summary

No. 35

I called the devil and he came,

And I looked at him with amazement.

He is not ugly and not lame,

He is a dear, charming man.

A man in his best years,

Friendly and polite and experienced.

He is a clever diplomat,

And speaks well about church and state,

A little pale, but that's no wonder,

He is currently studying Sanskrit and Hegel.

His favorite poet is still Fouqué.

But now he is done being a critic,

He has fully turned it over

To his dear grandmother, Hecate.

He praised my juristical strivings,

Once himself spent time on it.

He said nothing was dearer to him

Than my friendship, and nodded.

And asked: have we not met already

At the Spanish ambassador's?

And when I looked at him closely,

I recognized an old friend.

No. 58

Too fragmentary are world and life!

For the German Professor I am rife.

He skillfully joins all of life's shreds

In a system through rational deduction;

With his nightcap and his sleeping robe's threads,

He stuffs gaps in the world's construction.