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Du liebe Unschuld du, wie schlecht wirst du geachtt!--(Goed. 3.)
Appeared in the Crü. Praxis, 1656, p. 650.
English Version:
1. By J. Kelly, under the heading, "Under the vexations of the wicked prosperous world," the first stanza as follows:
| Ah! lovely innocence, how evil art thou deemed, How lightly oft thy work by all the world's esteem'd! Thou servest God, thy Lord, and to His word thou cleavest. For this, from men thou nought but scorn and hate receivest. |
This translation is somewhat labored as is especially evident in line 4 above for the German:
| "Darüber höhnt man dich und drückt dich aller Orten." |
Goedeke in his note to this hymn points out that from the use of the Alexandrine verse, the freedom from biblical phraseology and from the generality of the expressions it is probable that this is one of Gerhardt's earliest poems composed at a time when he patterned his writings after the model of Opitz.122122On Gerhardt's use of the Alexandrine cf. p. 20 f, and on the influence of Opitz cf. p. 18.
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