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From the Sinngedichte of Friedrich von Logau
MONEY WHEREUNTO is money good? | |
| Who has it not wants hardihood, | |
| Who has it has much trouble and care, | |
| Who once has had it has despair. | |
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THE BEST MEDICINES Joy and Temperance and Repose | 5 |
| Slam the door on the doctor’s nose. | |
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SIN Man-like is it to fall into sin, | |
| Fiend-like is it to dwell therein, | |
| Christ-like is it for sin to grieve, | |
| God-like is it all sin to leave. | 10 |
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POVERTY AND BLINDNESS A blind man is a poor man, and blind a poor man is; | |
| For the former seeth no man, and the latter no man sees. | |
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LAW OF LIFE Live I, so live I, | |
| To my Lord heartily, | |
| To my Prince faithfully, | 15 |
| To my Neighbor honestly, | |
| Die I, so die I. | |
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CREEDS Lutheran, Popish, Calvinistic, all these creeds and doctrines three | |
| Extant are; but still the doubt is, where Christianity may be. | |
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THE RESTLESS HEART A mill-stone and the human heart are driven ever round; | 20 |
| If they have nothing else to grind, they must themselves be ground. | |
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CHRISTIAN LOVE Whilom Love was like a fire, and warmth and comfort it bespoke; | |
| But, alas! it now is quenched, and only bites us, like the smoke. | |
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ART AND TACT Intelligence and courtesy not always are combined; | |
| Often in a wooden house a golden room we find. | 25 |
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RETRIBUTION Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; | |
| Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all. | |
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TRUTH When by night the frogs are croaking, kindle but a torch’s fire, | |
| Ha! how soon they all are silent! Thus | |
| Truth silences the liar. | 30 |
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RHYMES If perhaps these rhymes of mine should sound not well in strangers’ ears, | |
| They have only to bethink them that it happens so with theirs; | |
| For so long as words, like mortals, call a fatherland their own, | |
| They will be most highly valued where they are best and longest known. | |
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