Wanderer's Song : Essential Poems

A fresh translation of the poetry of German Romantic and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Germany’s greatest man of letters… and the last true polymath to walk the earth”  — George Eliot

Here, in this selection of his poetry, is a representation of Goethe’s life from childhood to old age: full of travel, romantic fixations, curiosity, nostalgia, deep thought, and above all, writing.

Goethe is undoubtedly Germany’s greatest poet, as Shakespeare is England’s. This fresh translation offers the reader an introduction to Goethe’s genius. And what a genius!

Novelist, dramatist, philosopher and above all poet; a scientist with deep interests in Nature, in particular the human body, forestry, geology, botany and light; a courtier and in later life considered a sage, he was also a very frequent letter writer, no mean artist, and a man who was able throughout his life to renew and rejuvenate himself creatively, working out many of his life’s problems through his writings.

For English speakers he is probably best known as the author of Faust, a vast dramatic work mainly in verse which occupied him on and off throughout his long life, as well as The Sorrows of Young Werther, a novel of youthful despair which became the sacred text of the Romantic movement.

This volume brings together his very personal lyric poetry, hewing as close to the original form, content, and rhyme schemes as possible in English.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), now chiefly remembered for his poetry, above all the long work Faust, was a German polymath who published fiction, drama, philosophy, travel essays, and scientific works in his lifetime, as well as verse. One of the principal figures of the Romantic movement, he is a towering figure in German letters, and one of the most influential thinkers of the modern era.


John Kent (b. 1936) taught German, French and Russian in secondary schools for three decades, as well as starring in regional theatre productions and assisting disabled students at the University of Chichester. He has been working on the translations collected here in his spare time since some point in the 1950s.