Poetry Codex

German

Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)

1772–1801

Friedrich von Hardenberg, who wrote as Novalis, was born in 1772 at Oberwiederstedt in Saxony and trained as a lawyer and mining administrator while moving in the Jena circle of early German Romanticism. The death in 1797 of his young betrothed, Sophie von Kühn, became the centre of his work.

His Hymns to the Night (1800) and Spiritual Songs (1802) turn that bereavement into a mystical devotion to night, death and Christ. He died of consumption in 1801, aged twenty-eight. The English versions here are George MacDonald's, printed in Rampolli (1897).

Major Works (1)

  1. Hymns to the Night — translated by George MacDonald (Rampolli, 1897)

Poems (16)

  1. Without thee, what were life or being!
  2. Dawn, far eastward, on the mountain!
  3. Who in his chamber sitteth lonely
  4. Of the thousand hours me meeting
  5. If I him but have
  6. My faith to thee I break not
  7. Hymn
  8. Weep I must--my heart runs over
  9. He lives! he’s risen from the dead!
  10. The times are all so wretched!
  11. I know not what were left to draw me
  12. Earth’s Consolation, why so slow?
  13. When in hours of fear and failing
  14. Who once hath seen thee, Mother fair
  15. In countless pictures I behold thee
  16. A Parable (From The Disciples at Sais)

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