This poem is taken from PN Review 25, Volume 8 Number 5, May - June 1982.

Explanation of an old woodcut depicting Hans Sachs' poetic mission translated by Christopher Middleton

Goethe

SUNDAY morning in his shop,
Here's our good master standing up:
He'd doffed his dirty apron skin;
A festive doublet now he's in.
Gives hammer and thread and knife a rest,
His awl put back in his workchest;
Now takes he seventh day repose
From cutting up and hammer blows.

Now warms the springtime sun his mind,
Rest brings work of a different kind:
A little world he feels, our man,
Brewing up in his brainpan,
He feels it start to move and live
And that he'd like it forth to give.

He'd have a true eye, shrewd enough,
And in himself sufficient love
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