To Goethe 21 Poem by Robert Laurence Binyon

Will they blot also out your name

Because you praise
All works of men that shrine the flame

Of beauty's ways,

Wherever men have proved them great,

Nor, drunk with pride,
Saw but a single swollen State

And naught beside,

Nor dreamed of drilling Europe's mind

With threat and blow
The way professors have designed

Genius should go ?

Or shall a people rise at length

And see and shake
The fetters from its giant strength,

And grandly break

This pedantry of feud and force

To man untrue
Thundering and blundering on its course

To death and rue ?