“Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.”

—  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Der Erlkönig

Der Erlkönig (1782)
Context: Who rides, so late, through night and wind?
It is the father with his child.
He holds the boy in the crook of his arm
He holds him safe, he keeps him warm.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 22, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Who rides, so late, through night and wind? It is the father with his child." by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe185
German writer, artist, and politician 1749–1832

Related quotes

Robert Louis Stevenson photo

“Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?”

Robert Louis Stevenson book A Child's Garden of Verses

Windy Nights, st. 1.
A Child's Garden of Verses (1885)

Henry Fielding photo

“The dusky night rides down the sky,
And ushers in the morn;
The hounds all join in glorious cry,
The huntsman winds his horn,
And a-hunting we will go.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

A-Hunting We Will Go (1734), st. 1

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow photo

“And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Tales of a Wayside Inn

Pt. I, The Landlord's Tale: Paul Revere's Ride, st. 8.
Tales of a Wayside Inn (1863-1874)

Elizabeth Butler-Sloss photo

“Mother brings a child late to contact by half-an-hour; father then requires an extra half-hour the next week. This is getting silly. If, in fact, the father does not see the child at all, of course he should see the child on another occasion, but there are fathers who actually add up the minutes and produce it and say "Now I should have so much more contact because I lost five minutes last week and ten minutes the week before."”

Elizabeth Butler-Sloss (1933) English judge

Testimony before the Constitutional Affairs Committee http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmconst/uc1247-i/uc124702.htm, November 9, 2004

Virginia Woolf photo

“There was a star riding through clouds one night, & I said to the star, 'Consume me'.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Source: The Waves

Seba Smith photo

“The cold winds sweeping the mountain-height,
And pathless was the dreary wild,
And ’mid the cheerless hours of night
A mother wandered with her child:
As through the drifting snows she press’d,
The babe was sleeping on her breast.”

Seba Smith (1792–1868) American humorist

The Snow Storm.

“I am my father's father,
You are your children's guilt.

In history's pity and terror
The child is Aeneas again;

Troy is in the nursery,
The rocking horse is on fire.

Child labor! The child must carry
His fathers on his back.”

Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) American poet

&quot;The Ballad of the Children of the Czar&quot; http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-ballad-of-the-children-of-the-czar/ <br class="br">Selected Poems: Summer Knowledge (1959)

E.E. Cummings photo

“my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

34
50 Poems (1940)

Tom Waits photo

“I've been riding on the crest of a slump lately.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

“I think what he went through as a child was very heavy. He never got over his mother leaving his father, and following her mother to Florida, to an area that was very different, and losing his father. When he was seven years old, this was a very sensitive boy, who was wide-eyed and trusting, and not knowing how to protect himself at all.”

Sandra Seacat (1936) American acting teacher and actress

As heard in the &quot;Mickey Rourke&quot; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_KOo2uaH3E installment of The Dark Side of Fame with Piers Morgan, broadcast October 6, 2008.

Related topics