Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 485

The modest truth I speak to thee.

Though folly's microcosm, man, it seems,

Himself to be a perfect whole esteems:

Part of the part am I, which at the first was all,

A part of darkness, which gave birth to light—

Proud light, who now his mother would enthrall,

Contesting space and ancient rank with night.

Yet he succeedeth not, for struggle as he will,

To forms material he adhereth still;

From them he streameth, them he maketh fair,

And still the progress of his beams they check;

And so, I trust, when comes the final wreck,

Light will, ere long, the doom of matter share.