In the old house; before me, free,
I see all Prague in its wide circuit;
deep down below, the twilight hour
goes by with soundless, gentle step.

The city blurs as though behind glass.
Only on high, like a helmeted giant,
clear before me rises the verdigris-green
tower-dome of Saint Nicholas.

Already, here and there, a light
blinks far off in the city’s sultry roar.–
It seems to me that in the old house
a voice now speaks its "Amen."

Old houses, steep-gabled,
high towers full of chiming,–
into the narrow courtyards flirts
only a tiny scrap of sky.

And on every stair-post,
wearily smiling–little cupids;
high on the roof, round baroque
vases, chains of roses trickle down.

Cobweb-woven is the gateway
there. Furtively the sun reads out
the mysterious words
beneath a stone Madonna.

The noble house with its broad ramp:
how fair its grey gleam seems to me.
The footway with its wretched paving-stones,
and there, at the corner, the dim, fat lamp.

On a window-ledge a pigeon nods,
as though it would peer through the curtain’s cloth;
and swallows live in the gateway’s loopholes:
that I call mood, yes, that I call–magic.

So gladly I gaze at the weathered
brow of the old castle-keep;
even the child’s glance once climbed
up there.

And even the hurrying
Moldau-waves greet the Hradschin;
from the bridge the saints look
gravely down on it.

And the towers gaze, the newer ones,
all toward St. Vitus’ finial,
as a throng of children to their dear
father look up.

Gladly I stand before the old cathedral;
a breath of mould blows there, of rot,
and every window, every column
still speaks its own idiom.

There crouches a richly scrolled house
and smiles its rococo eroticism,
and hard beside it the Gothic stretches
its withered hands out in prayer.

Now the casus rei grows clear to me;
it is a parable from olden times:
the Abbé here–and at his side
the lady of the roi soleil.

How, ringed with stone, with bronze,
the wide vault of the walls glitters;
a saint, darkened to brown,
glimmers behind clouded candles.

From the ceiling’s rounded masonry,
above an angel’s head, there hovers
bright a white drop of silver,
in which an eternal small light crouches.

And in the corner, where gilt-gleam
hangs down in dusty clots,
wrapped in dirt and rags there stands
silent a child of the beggar caste.

From all that splendor not a spark
of blessing flowed into its breast....
Trembling, faint, it stretches toward me
its hand, with a soft "Prosím!"

All the walls within the hall
full of precious stone; who could
name them all: rock-crystals,
smoky topaz, amethyst.

Magic-bright as a miracle
the chamber gleams in the flickering light;
beneath the golden tabernacle
rests the dust of holy Wenceslas.

Brimful of shining to its crown
the cupola stands, the hollow dome;
and the gold-gleam gazes vainly
into the yellow carnelians.

There, I see towers, some domed like acorns
and others, again, sharp as slender pears;
there lies the city; to its thousand brows
the evening nestles now with soft caresses.

Wide it stretches its black body. Far behind,
see St. Mary’s double towers flash.
Is it not so: through two antenna-tips
it drank the violet inks of heaven into itself!

The modern building-template
truly will not suit me at all.
Here, this old house may hold
rich, wide stone terraces,
small, secret balconies.

And the wide-vaulted ceilings,
so kindly to the lute,
niches built in all around,
out of which the arms of the dear
dusk reach toward you.

All the walls broader, stronger,
and of true ashlar cores;–
in faith, I could learn to shudder,
looking out at the tenement-barracks
from the small, still bay-window.

Snug it is, when furtively
wild winds howl in the chimney
in the room; quite gently
on the baroque cupboard
the columned mantel-clock ticks on.
There, the little silhouette
shows the old fashion of the curls;
deep in the window stands a distaff,
and forgotten notes falter
in the abandoned spinet.
The book of homilies still keeps,
that on its spirit young and old
may be refreshed, upon the table,
and the motto above that niche
reads: "Thy will be done...."

Often I see the secret room come alive,
so vividly the walls tell their tale;
a lovely girl, half a child still, lifts
her hands there to the Madonna.

A sturdy boy stands by the father,
who did much for the house’s gain.
They began, whispering, the evening prayer,
and Mother lets the spinning-wheel rest.

Then it seems to me the eye grows wet
even of the Madonna in her frame.
I listen:–loud from the father’s bass
sounds the reconciling: "Amen."

The son draws near with heavy step
to his father. Heavy the tongue....
"Really, what, a little bride, my boy?!
Come forward, in with her, now!"

And there for the first time
the girl stands red and silent;
and the father polishes his glasses:
"The devil! Your choice was good!"

And he stretches out his arms,
and the little bride shyly takes
his kiss and his blessing....
Of this the old house knows.

To the fair-haired child too it came
into her heart, her woodland-lake-pure heart,
like the dark foreboding of
a great happiness or grief.

And the mother let the little wheel
stop.–"Child, what makes you suffer?"
Stormily sobbing the girl kept silent:
yet the two understood each other.

Soon after: at the little gate there knocked
a young man.–"Will you have each other?"–A pause.–
Oh!–Who could still be asking that!?–
So it came to pass in the old house.

Still today the room.–White as chalk
is the little wife’s face. Weary and listless
her moist eye; half senseless
she leans by Father’s bier.

Beside her, the husband can
console her now in no way at all;
now he takes her hands gently
and looks at her, grave and beseeching.

"My little mother, take this bouquet!"
rings bright from the door the small one’s word;
then a smile glimmers through her weeping,
and comfort goes through the old house.

Not to see the everyday bustle,
I flee–as though I were an ostrich,–
here into the old, old house;
then for long I look out no more
through the broad leaded panes.

Plainness was the fathers’ sowing,
happiness the fruit they found;
I sit so, dreaming, many an hour
there in the cushioned chair, the round one,
amid ancestral household goods.

Old autumn can gag the day,
its thousand jubilant voices fall silent;
high from the cathedral tower, so strangely, whimper
death-bells in November fogs.

On the wet roofs lies, half-asleep,
a white haze-light; and with cold hands
the storm reaches, in the chimney’s walls,
for the closing octaves of a requiem.

By St. Loretto a light burns
before the picture in the little street-chapel;
and close about the wall-image nestle
tin flowers with colored cups.

The saints pull a sour face;
for the storm-wind, that hasty boy, has
no respect for them; by Loretto the light
gazes piously into the darkening Sabbath.

In the smoldering dusk-haze
the city has already melted away;
high stands the house of the nuns
of the Order of Carmel.

The evening hops down the slope,
past, with sheaves of fire,
and winds a thousand colors
round every window-bar.

It decks the gloomy house
in vain with glints of light;
so do fresh wreaths look
upon gravestones.

The Father Guardian has
offered me of the cloister-schnapps;
I know it already, that dark-red one
that can wake all the dead.

The Father hunts for the key, the small one,
there, where the kerchief’s corners showed blue,
and brings the treasure, the home-brewed,
out from the reliquary-shrine.

And as he pours, he laughs, fat-cheeked,
and says: "To dust are the bones
that once rested in the shrine,
yet to us has remained—-the spirit!"

Lonely behind the last house
the red sun goes to sleep,
and in grave closing octaves
the day’s rejoicing dies away.

Loose lights still chase
each other late on the roof-edges,
when night already sows diamonds
into the blue distances.

I lean in the armchair, the easy one,
where often I forgot distress;
wearily the frizzled chrysanthemums nod
in the tall Venetian glass.

I read in a volume of poems
a long, long while; how the time slipped away!
Only now, in the evening twilight,
I lay it, blissful, from my hand.

It seems to me that of divine problems
I have just now overheard the solution,–
has the breath of the chrysanthemums,
has Vrchlický’s book intoxicated me?

Still it is in the cloister, the old one,
where over crinkled columned arabesques
there look down from half-effaced frescoes
mysterious figures of the saints.

Where a wax Madonna, credited with
many a grace-filled healing-miracle,
shines behind the gray glass of the tabernacle
in her silver-strewn dress of silk.

Late-summer gossamer stretches over leaf-gold
outside as well, in Loretto’s cloister-court,–
before a picture in Tintoretto’s style
a young pair of lovers stands, blissful and still.

I must to Rome; to our little town
I’ll come back in a year, with fame;
do not weep; see, beloved girl,
in Rome I’ll make my masterpiece.

He spoke it; then he set off in a rapture
through that world he had hoped for;
yet it seemed his soul kept listening
to an inward reproach, and often.

The unrest, the cruel one, drove him home:
with streaming eyes he sculpted
his poor, pale love in her coffin,
and that–that was his masterpiece.

The birds rejoice–woken by light–,
the blue expanses fill with their sound;
in the Imperial Park the old ball-house
is wholly covered over with blossom.

The sun writes itself, full of hope,
into the young grass in great letters.
Only there, beneath withered leaves,
a stone Apollo still sighs sadly.

Then a light breeze nears, sweeps in a dance
the yellow leaf-tendrils away,
and lays around his brow, the gleaming one,
the bluing wreath of lilac.

...God was in good humor. Stinting
is surely not his way;
and he smiled: and there arose
Bohemia, rich with a thousand charms.

Like frozen light the wheat lies
between mountains, forest-haired,
and the tree, that close-thronged
fruits weigh down, calls for props.

God gave huts; stalls full
of sheep; and the country lass’s bodice
all but bursts with health.

He gave the lads, the upright all,
strength in the rough fist,
and in the heart–the songs of home.

I go along the Malvasinka,
the children’s row, where soft and good
little Anka or Ninka
rests in her last small bed.

On a narrow mound of clods,
hidden deep in tall poppies, there kneels,
with dusty, broken wing,
a little angel of raw clay.

The wing-lamed little child stirred
pity in me,–the poor thing....
Then, look! From its lips there loosed
itself lightly a small butterfly.–

All round lies All Souls’ Day
full of wistfulness and scent of blossom,
and a hundred colored lights smolder
from the Field of Peace into the air.

Today they send palms and roses;
the gardener arranges them with care–
and sweeps to the corner of the faithless
the old, withered flowers.

"Now pray, Willi,–and don’t talk!"
With wide eyes the boy obeys.
The father lays the wreath of mignonette
on his poor wife’s grave.

"Mother sleeps here! Now make a cross!"
Little Willi looks up and makes one,
as he was told. Ah, now he’s sorry
that he laughed on the way out here!

It pricks him in the eye–like weeping....
Then they go homeward through the night;
all grave and mute. Then, at the exit,
the splendor of the stalls suddenly lures the little one.

It glitters across through the November fog,
that light-glinting trumpery;
he sees there little horses, helmets, sabers,
and softly kisses his father’s hand.

And the father understands. Then they go on....
The father looks so sad.–
But a gingerbread horseman
Willi drags, blissful, home.

Wide over Prague, gigantic,
the chalice of night has opened now;
the sun-butterfly hid its splendor
in her cool calyx-lap.

High grins the moon, that sly gnome,
and teasing he scatters the skeins
of white silver shavings
down into the Moldau-stream.

Then suddenly, as if affronted, he
has called his beams back,
because he grew aware of his rival:
the tower-clock’s bright dial of hours.

Evening draws near.–The clear zone
of its brow is decked with a golden circlet,
and a thousand shadow-hands reach
furtively for the red crown.

The first, pale stars flirt
toward it; it stands high on the Hradschin
and gazes with grave dreamer’s mien
at the towers and the gray gables.

On the evening of All Souls’ Day

The withered branches lattice over
the evening-pale panes of the sky;
and over tombs, richly decked
with foliage, wistfulness moves, and the lights
tremble through the drifting leaves.

In the weary blue, the motionless,
the moon swims far off. The arbor-vitae,
that caress its gleaming brow,
are black. The scent of withered roses
steals in like ghosts of dead dreams.

Far-off noise from the carriage-road.–
Here peace and forgetting take seed;
between two grave-cypresses
the moon hangs like a tam-tam.

Does not eternity strike softly
upon it now with a black clapper?
Anxious, a marble angel gazes
into the eye of the late-autumn night.

The waterfall is frozen over,
the jackdaws huddle hard by the pond.
My lovely love has reddened ears
and is plotting some roguish prank.

The sun kisses us. Lost in dreams,
a tone in the minor swims in the branches;
and on we go, our every pore
full of the strong aroma of morning.

Quite vanished is the old,
sweet poetry of fountains,
when from Triton’s conch-shell cleft
a clear spring babbled,
that lent the lanes a speech.

Of an evening, by the conduit-troughs,
pair gathered after pair,
because the spring’s lovely glinting
and its sound were a sweet omen
of deep-set inclination.

But when, by men’s contriving, then,
water climbed up flights of stairs,
and no pair came: the god
turned misogynist; verdigris crept
into the conch,–and he fell silent.

They found her, the skull half shattered,
in her stiff hand the hot barrel of steel.
The crowd gawked.–Till the ambulance
brought her into the yellow city-hospital.

Just once she opened her eye....
No letter!, no name, only a dress, a shawl;
then came the doctor with his soft questioning,
and then the priest.–She stayed mute and pale.

But late at night, then she wanted to say something,
to confess... But no one heard her in the ward.
A rattling.–Then she was carried out,
she and her pain.–
And outside stands no stone.

Night comes, the hem of her blue dress
richly decked with jewels;–
gently, with both her Madonna-hands,
she holds out to me a dream.

Then she goes, to do her duty,
on through the city with quiet step,
and takes, as the dream’s wage, over yonder
the sick child’s soul along with her.

Hush!–I hear how, along the railings,
the wind hops lightly past,
how the sun knots ray-ends
to the umbels of lilac.

Stillness all round. Only a puffed-up
frog keeps up a gnat-hunt,
and a beetle swims in the ether,
a living emerald.

In the branches Mother Spider spins
silver rhombuses, inch by inch,
and the world has its hands full
of hecatombs of blossom.

As King Balthasar once drew near,
his brow lit by the circlet of the crown,
so, in purple vestments, steps
King Evening into the world.

The first star leads him, as it led that other,
to the farthest rim of hills;
there he finds Mother Night reclining
with her child in her arms, the Dream.

To it he brings, just as that Wise Man
of the Orient did, gold, heaped up,–
the gold that the boy, gently, redeeming,
drips into our slumber.

Winter comes, and with it my old woman,
who at the corner always roasted chestnuts.
Her face looks out from a gap in her shawls
glad and healthy, though wrinkle upon wrinkle
has run through it for many years.

And capable she is, yes, that I’ll grant;
the paper cones must be clean, and the light
at her stand must always shine bright,
and from the stove with the crooked legs
she sternly demands its hot duty.

No one stews the chestnuts so well.
Meanwhile she notes who comes along the way,
and knows them all–down to the tram-pony;
she’s been at it years now, old Toni....
And softly her stove hums its song.

Great saints and small
every parish celebrates;
of wood and of fine stone,
great saints and small.

Holy Annes and Catherines,
who appeared to them in dreams,
they build for themselves and serve,
holy Annes and Catherines.

Wenceslas I’ll allow as well,
since they seldom commissioned him;
for too many are seldom worth much–
well, Saint Wenceslas I’ll allow.

But these Nepomuks!
From the gateway’s loopholes they peer
and on every bridge they haunt,
nothing but, nothing but Nepomuks!

I know a girl, her cheeks
fallen in.–Her mother was
a loose kerchief; and the father’s curse
fell into her first babbling.

Poverty stayed true to her down the years,
and hunger was her christening-gift;
so she grew grave.–The spring-gold runs
in vain into her hair.

She looks at the smiling faces
of the flowers, sad, in the hedge,
and thinks: All Souls’ Day too
has blossoms and lights.

The first shoots, the tender ones,
have sprouted in the golden shimmer;
already the first of the carriages
are in the Baumgarten.

The migrant birds have flocked again
together at the old place,
and soon the bandstand too strikes up
in the Baumgarten.

The spring-wind prattles in new ways
the old, wondrous fairy-tales,
and outside the first young couple dreams
in the Baumgarten.

I look back, how year on year
rolled by so heavy with toil;
now at last I am what I wanted
and what I strove for: a scholar.

To study "Law" was first my plan;
but my light temper was scared off
by the stern and dusty Pandects,
and so the plan became a folly.

Theology my love forbade,
I couldn’t throw myself on Medicine,
so that, for my weak nerves,
nothing but–Philosophizing remained.

The alma mater holds out to me
the splendid register of the liberal arts,–
and though I never make Master,
I am what I strove for: a scholar.

Never can the trace quite fade
of a strong deed; this the pyre
at Constance teaches us;
for out of a thousand fire-baptisms
the high spirit rises unharmed.

Vast, all the way to us,
towers the reformer Hus;
though we fear his teaching’s fire,
still we bow in shy
reverence before the genius.

He whom the court condemned
was in his heart, deep and pure,
convinced of his office,–
and the high woodpile flamed
the radiance of his fame.

Sometimes from the shelf on the wall
I take down my Schopenhauer;
a "dungeon full of sorrow"
he called this being of ours.

If he is right, I have lost
nothing: in dungeon-solitudes
I wake the strings of my soul,
happy as Dalibor once did.

The air is mild, as in the death-chamber
at whose door Death already stands still;
on the wet roofs lies a pale shimmer,
like that of the candle about to go out.

The rainwater rattles in the gutters,
the listless wind holds an inquest on the leaves;–
and like a flock of startled snipe
the small clouds drift, fearful, through the gray.

You are a master;–sooner or later
your people will harness themselves to your triumph-car;
you praise their kind and their old sagas,–
from your songs blows the ether of the homeland.

Your people do right,–not, puffed with deluded
bygone glory, to sit with hands in their lap;
they fight even now and must lay on stoutly,
proud of themselves and proud of their fathers.

Your people have not yet let their ideals
be pawned away up to the stars,
which are unreachable and gleam with longing;

but you admonish, a true Oriental,
that in the struggle they not unlearn
the art, in the Alhambra’s court, of resting too.

There was a dream deep in my soul.
I listened to the lovely dream:
I slept.
Just then a happiness passed by, as I slept,
and as I dreamed, I did not hear it;
it called.

Dreams seem to me like orchids.–
Like those, they are bright and rich.
From the giant trunk of the life-saps
they draw, just like those, their powers,
flaunt themselves with the sucked-up blood,
rejoice in the fleeting minute,
and in the next are dead and pale.–
And when worlds go softly overhead,
do you not feel it then, like a waft of scents?
Dreams seem to me like orchids.–

Up the theater ramp
the carriages roll thundering;
off to the side, under a dim lamp,
an old woman stands, morose.

Only when a stallion suddenly shied
did she give a start;
no one in the stream of people
sees the old woman in the corner.

Of the new "celebrity" they thought,
of her alone they spoke.–A count’s
kindness, it was said, had brought
her talent splendidly to flower.

Later. Storms of cheering rang
into the closing blare of trumpets....
But outside it came to the old woman
to pray, in secret, for her child.

Do you still remember how, in good spirits,
we wandered through the Nusle valley;
two small blue butterflies
fluttered away in the evening ray.

By the little house leaned the melon
there–as in a picture by Dou,
and splendid with its cupola-crown
the head of the Karlshof rose up.

In the west the wheat was still golden,
blue-green the cabbage dimmed to dusk;
the first white umbels of stars
trembled round the pole of heaven.

On viewing his little room, as reconstructed at the Bohemian
Ethnographic Exhibition.

So here, then, poor Týl
wrote his song "Kde domov můj."
In truth: whom the Muses love,
to him life does not give too much.

A little room–not too small for the flight
of the spirit; not too large for rest.–
A chair, a chest for a writing-desk,
a bed, a wooden cross, and a jug.

Yet not for a thousand louis would he
have left Bohemia. With every fiber
he clung to it.–"I would rather stay,"
he’d have said, "kde domov můj."

It moves me so,
the Bohemian people’s tune;
softly it steals into the heart,
it makes it heavy.

When a child sings
quietly, weeding potatoes,
its song still sounds for you
in the late dream of night.

Though you may have
journeyed far across the land,
still, after years, it comes
back to you again.

After a cartoon-sketch by Herr Liebscher.

The Genius lays his hand
so gently on the young man’s brow
that with the song’s silver thread
he spins about his sweetheart’s heart.

Then the lad may sweetly recall
what once rang from his mother’s mouth,
and with the sound from within him
he fills his fiddle full.

Love and the homeland’s beauty
press the bow into his hand,
and softly his notes trickle down
like a rain of blossom on the land.

And great poets, drunk with fame,
listen to the simple song
as faithfully as the people once listened
to the word of God on Sinai.

In the inn, on the scoured floorboards,
the young folk swing, fresh and loud;
the lad’s hand, so hard with calluses,
presses the fair girl’s tenderly;
beer-merry players strike up
a tune from the "Bartered Bride."

"Drink up! Today I’ll stand you treat."
The parson. He loves a merry spirit.
And as, after the dance, he bids
the pretty ones come to his table,
outside the evening goes by, golden,
and laughs, brazen, through every window.

From memory the dear
home of childhood has not fled,
where I looked at picture-sheets
in the blue-silk drawing-room.

Where a doll’s dress, richly braided
with thick strands of silver,
was happiness to me; where hot tears
were wrung from me by "Arithmetic."

Where I, following a dark call,
reached for poems,
and on a window-step
played at tram or ship.

Where a girl always waved to me
over there in the count’s grove....
The palace that glittered then
looks so drowsy today.

And the fair-haired child that laughed
when the boy threw it kisses
is now gone; far off it rests, softly,
where it may never smile again.

No sound reaches me here
of the nations’ wild quarrel;
I take, indeed, no side;
for right is neither there nor here.

And because I never forgot Horace,
I keep on good terms with all the world
and hold inviolably to the old
aurea mediocritas.

He seems to me the greatest
who swears to no flag,
and, because he broke from the part,
now belongs to the whole world.

His home is the world; yet
the homeland’s hoard is not made small for him;
for the fatherland is to him
then his house in his native place.

I know of a giant park
out where the city already trails away;
now the axe gnaws at its marrow,
they say it’s to be parceled out.

That is the princely park Clam-Gallas,
which must give way to tenement-blocks;
yet it was like a grove of Pallas,
full of the whispering oracles.

Now they storm it, the uninitiated,
the place no profane eye had seen:
the noise of the times drowns out
the god’s word of the Pythia.

The great sun is sprayed away,
the summer evening lies in fever,
and its hot cheek glows.
Abruptly it sighs: "I would rather...."
And then again: "I am so tired...."

The bushes pray litanies,
a glow-worm hangs, the motionless one,
there, like an eternal light, within;
and a small white rose
wears a red halo.

"On the Ring" once stood a scaffold of blood;
long ago it was; yet when the gleam
of the round moon kisses the Town Hall,
then from the holy Týn there throng
the condemned in ghostly ranks...
Woe to whoever saw them!

Many lords fell on the Ring;
the lords can find no rest;–
they marched one night: at their head
went the Lord Christ, great and luminous,
with grave and sorrowful face...
And one man saw it!

He was a painter. And in haste
he paints, as he had seen it, the Ring.
He paints the whole ghostly procession,
at whose head the Lord Christ gravely went.
He paints... until a fever seized him...
Now he is dead.–

The day went out on a mild note,
as a hammer-stroke dies away.
Like a yellow golden melon
the moon lay large in the grass on the slope.

A little cloud wanted a nibble,
and managed to snatch a few inches
of the bright round disk;
quickly it chews its cheeks full.

It lingered long in its flight
and dressed itself wholly in light;–
then Night took up the golden fruit:
black grew the cloud, and melted away.

People of Bohemia! In your circles
a new Genius wakes
old, hot strains of freedom,
and they admonish, not with quiet
words, that your fetter-iron
must be shattered utterly.

These battle-poets blow
enticingly; and you can hew
to pieces, people, in your frenzy,
the marble vases of the law,
yet out of their phrases you
can build yourself no future.

Deep into heart and mind, in faithful
hope, sink the seed of song,
if your poets are dear to you,
that from it a spring, a new one,
may sprout.–What then remained of the fire,
let that inflame you to the deed.

On the theater ramp, too,
little by little it grows still.–
A vain arc-lamp
looks at itself in a cab’s roof.

On the empty footway flicker
lights.–Do not, there on the house,
the bright attic dormer-windows
look like eyes red with weeping?

Out through the hot red of evening
men and girls go from the factories,–
on their low, dull brows
need has written itself in sweat and soot.

The faces are blunted; the eye
has broken. Heavily the sole shuffles
the road, and dust trails, and bawling,
like fate, after them.

In summer a little steamer carries us
on the Moldau’s waves to Zlichov,
to that little church, high and free.
In the blue mist Smíchov fades;–
to the right, flats brown with sorrel,
to the left, proud, the "Lorelei."

We put in; and see, an old man
greets us, droning: "Hej, Slované!"
Then we lean by the graveyard’s edge.
High the sky’s splendid cornflower blues,
and our dreaming lifts, a butterfly,
on sun-wings up to it.

AT THE CHURCHYARD OF KÖNIGSAAL (aula regis)

The sexton unlocked the bronze gate.
For blossoms you saw no grave.
Spring veiled from Death
its face with bloom and scent;
then, like a death-ode,
a mourning-cloak rose into the air.

We both saw it and kept silent....
All round midsummer light kept feast,
in the lilacs flies hummed.–
Then a skull lay close before us;
out of its empty eyes there grew
stunted forget-me-nots.

The fallow fields already sleep,
my heart alone keeps watch;
the evening in the harbor already
reefs in its red sail.

Dream-blessed vigil!
Now night wanders through the land;
the moon, the white lily,
blooms open in her hand.

I lean at the open window of the room
and dream up into the night;
the moonlight winds, silver-stranded,
about the black knob of the church-tower.

Though few worlds look in from the distances,
through the narrow court into the house,–
light from ten stars would fill
a whole, dark life.

Listen, the step of night dies out
in the wide stillness;
my desk-lamp chirps
soft as a cricket.

Golden on the bookshelf
glow the spines of the volumes:
piers for the bridges
of the journey into fairyland.

She, half a child, once spent a night
beside her dead little mother,
and wept, and kept the watch;–
then years went by, years softly:
never did she think of that night.

And then another night came.
When, kindled by heat and sin,
the red lip laughed with pleasure,
but suddenly–as by a higher power
she thought of the night of the death-watch.

To a picture by Beneš Knüpfer

The sun, the sublime one, melted
so hot into the white sea.
Two monks sat by the water,
one fair-haired, one an old man.

The first one mused: When I go to rest,
let it be peaceful so–
and the other: Let the blaze of glory
consecrate my dying to me.

High on his watchtower of heaven,
above a chart of stars,
sits the Emperor Rudolf there,
searching whether the long-awaited
flight-star, that mocked the wise men,
would graze this place.

And he asks the astrologer,
who along the high vault of heaven
knows all the wandering ways:
"Will he be cheated by misfortune,
the man the star has drawn
into the fateful circle?"

And the old man softly evades him:
"The star draws its track,
my lord, in the far ether-realm!"
And southward looks the wise man;–
and the Emperor watches the circles
of his globe, grave and pale.–

And from the south comes ruin,
comes Matthias.–Hasty heirs
leave him only the Hradschin;
and the Emperor speaks in bitter
mockery: "Nothing is left me but to die,
for already I am dead to ’him.’

Old man! Let us lift our gaze!
You are right, the stars float
high above all earthly ban;
but–those who strive toward them
knot their own dark lives
to the bright lots!"–

Charcoal Sketches in Callot’s Manner

1. WAR

Dark the world has grown,–
so: villages quickly ablaze!
and the world is grey;–so red
she stains it through the murdering!

Peasant! You beg for your life?
Take it! But stay with us!
The Lord God gave you ox and wife
for us alone.

Let the devil plough the fields;
look, we always have plenty!
Forward–a recruiting-drink
from the brimming jugs!

"...Death or pay!"
And now the drum, quick,
here. On the drumhead
dice are rolled.

So it goes for the wage
that hunts down our blows.
Look, the tree–rich fruit
it bears already!

You should long since
have hung from it, comrade!
So it is no great pity
when you hang there now!

I lay naked on a drum,
barely two spans long,
and the rough drum-beat
was my cradle-song.

To storm and rage I was fit
even then, in my wrath;
my milk, I sucked it
from the powder-horn.

Back then the corporal
christened each man well; by the forelock
he took him, poured Swedish blood
hot over his head.

With us there are no nobles
who count for their blood;
each man’s rank is each man’s blade,
and his coat-of-arms is courage.

Whoever boldly holds his sword,
keeps his shield clean of shame,–
he who but yesterday marched in the host,
a duke he can be tomorrow.

What’s this?–A cloister-gate?–
Why, by thunder!
A door of this sort
I batter in without much talk
with the tip of my nose!

A firm seal on the gate....
Priest, come out!
Now out with your junk,
a few monstrances for instance
and a few chalices: we are pious.

Leave off your: Peccavi, pater....
Light us to the wine
with your nose, frater,
there you can be our counsellor
and a "curate of souls"!

Yesterday wild hordes passed
through the little village, murdering,
and a girl now broods in silence:
Has my dearest turned untrue,
that he will not come today?–
Outside the jackdaws cried.

The girl went with pale cheek
through the house.–She waited long,
and at night sleep fled from her.
And she stole out to the slope
where she always met her love.
Anxiously the jackdaws cried.

And the night was black, the sultry,
far off only a mill was burning....
Weeping, the weary maid chooses
soft grass to be her pillow
and fell asleep in utter grief.
Did the jackdaws still cry?

Late she wakes. Mists greyed
all round–as far as the eyes could see....
Woe!–What she took for grass
is the hair on her beloved’s
bloody, shattered head.–
Terribly the jackdaws cried.

"Treason creeps in with soft step,–
unavenged, by the Madonna,
it shall not stay! By the old custom,
to the windows!" cried Colonna.

"Spare the small fry! but the others,
each one a cowardly adder,
out of the windows let them wander!
Pity?–Throw him out as well, the clerk!"

Anxious at the window-frame
Martinitz still hangs.–Then a death-rattle:
Turn swings the bell-guard of his sword
and shatters him at the ankles.

And to the next: "Say, what is he called,
Bohemia’s lord? you shall tell me!"
"Count von Turn!"–"Let the burgomaster
set all the bells to ringing!"–

"Your doublet, beloved, is full of gold.
Where did you come by the gold?"–
"There you see, child, that is my pay,
no colonel has more, I’d hold!"

"No, that is good, red gold,–
that cannot be your pay!"
"At the game luck favored me,
and then it all was mine!"

"Is it really all yours–the gold,
confess,–and is it no cheat?"–
"Well, dice went rolling in it too,
and now let that suffice!"

"And will you give me some of the gold?"
"You know I will!"–"No, you rogue,
right here on the spot, see, I would have
you fill your helmet for me!"

"So be it!"–"How it trembles through the fingers,
the gleam pleases me well!–

...Look, what is sticking there on your finger,
did that come from the gold?–Blood!"–....

"You kneel at the boundary-stone, old man, speak!–
That is no holy image!"
"No image?–I pray.–Fate seized me,
so wild, so hard."

"Have you no house, have you no land
that has need of your hands?"
"The land trampled, the house burnt,–
look there–surely–it smokes."

"Why does your son not build it up again
and help you out of your need?"
"My son marched off into the war,
now he is surely dead."–

"Why does your daughter’s hand not stroke,
so soft, the snow of your hair?"–
"A baggage-boy brought her shame and woe,
then she leapt into the pond."–

"Then look me in the face!–And did
your heart, too, break for horror...."

* * * * *

"I cannot, sir, a soldier stabbed
both my eyes out."

In winter, when the branches cracked,
no brooks could freeze,
because the floods of blood
kept rekindling their pulse anew.

When the time came that the flower
wakes and the bird makes its fluting,
the lily itself sprang reddened
out of the death-dunged soil.

Come home from battle and blows,
colonel and common man rejoice;
for now the Wallensteiner
holds his court at Prague once more.

Just now he let Turn go free;
that was one of his trump cards,–
one of them.–Whereon nose-turning
grew the fashion... there at the court in Vienna.

Let them carp. Friedland’s army
shall not starve and shall not thirst,–
and out of churls he makes princes,
our duke.–Who can do more?

Prague gave birth to the misshapen thing
of this war, which, full of malice,
housed itself.–On the Charles Bridge
it died, thirty years old.

At last the piece of iron
tore only a scratch in the field,
and from the church-tower the flame
struck back into the homely hearth.

Go at noon to the Ursulines,
when food is carried to the poor,–
there you see how, into weary faces,
want has written its signature.

There you see brows that early
the iron ring of pain enclosed,
and cheeks that the steam of the broth
drenched over with a false red.

You hear how, to soft words of thanks,
now a curse, now a prayer, attaches:
so against the cloister-gate breaks
all the misery of this world.

Summer days on the "Golka"....
I, a child still–Softly, near,
from the inn the polka sounds,
and the air is heavy with sun.

It is Sunday.–Helene reads
fondly to me.–In the gleam of light
the clouds drift by, like the swans
out of Andersen’s fairy tale.

Black firs stand like watchmen
by the meadow’s motley treasure;
from the road laughter carries
up to our arbor-place.

To the wall many a loud
shout of joy lures us both:
below, in festive dress,
pair after pair goes by to the dance.

Bright and blissful, lad and lass,
luck and sun upon their faces!–
Summer days on the "Golka",–
and the air was full of light....

"Wise Rabbi, high Liva, help us out of the ban of our need;
today Jehovah gives us children, tomorrow death robs them away.
Already Beth Chaim cannot hold the throngs, and hardly has the grave-warden
buried one when other dead draw near; Rabbi, this is hard."
And the Rabbi: "Go and send me a Bocher quickly in here–"
So it is done; "Do you dare go to Beth Chaim this night all alone?"
"You command it, wise master?" "Good, then hear: at midnight
all the children’s spirits dance softly on the grey stones.
Hide yourself there in prayer, and when fear grips your heart,
shake it off: boldly you rob the nearest child of its shroud,
rob it,–bring it here in flight, here to me! Do you understand?"
"As you bid me, master, I do!" the answer rings hollow.

Midnight and the shimmer of moon,–
...and the death-pale
Bocher plunges trembling through the lane,
in his hand the shroud, the white.

Now there... are those his steps?...
Sharply he turns back the pale
face: woe, the child’s corpse
follows after him, the plea in its eye:

"...Give the linen, without the linen
the spirits will not let me in...."
And the Bocher, half out of his mind,
hands it at last to his master.

And already the spirit nears with wailing....
"Say, why do a hundred die within
days?–Child, you must tell it,
sooner you may not go hence."

So the Rabbi.–"Woe, woe,"
cries the spirit, "from our own tribe
two have dishonored marriage’s
chaste and pure altar-flame!

Here are the names!–Seek no foreign
cause that death is dealt you...."
And the Rabbi hands the shroud
now to the child: "Go in peace!"

Scarcely had, from the night’s chalice, May-young,
the day risen in rosy light,
when the Rabbi already held his court,–
and to innocence came release.

With the scourge of the Law
he brands the sinners’ brow;–
slowly each mind unloosed
itself from the ban of the curse-net.

Many a couple had appeared there,
filled with thanks that God forgave,
and the wise man blesses them.–
Joy lay upon every face.

Only the Bocher, the pale one, threw
himself in fever to and fro....
But to Beth Chaim, for long after,
no child’s corpse was borne.

Soon, old Town-Hall clock, you might
never again have shown the hours;
soon, in old scrap-iron, they
had splintered away your last trace.

The Miser, hard, for the last time
had rocked his head in rigid defiance,
for the last time Death, with goggling stare,
had swung the steel of his scythe.

Then the cock, too, would have crowed its last.
And still today it crows; hoarse, to be sure,
still the Miser nods on, and softer
the majesty of Death threatens him.

A hot oath, a grief-wrung one,
that runs lightly from young lips,
made a sister of mercy
almost overnight of a fair-haired child.

The waves of her young life flow
henceforth through sick-rooms, quietly;
her heart still dreams of pleasure,
even if the eye would deny it.

For with the sternness of ascetics
she presses back what wells up in her,
and goes to pray for strength at Emmaus
to the wonder-strong image of grace.

The day has scarcely begun to lighten;
"Today be strong in faith as never,
and go with God about your duties:
It is a case of diphtheria...."

She tends and kisses the little sick one,
and yet Death grips him by the throat....
Late she gathers herself, to stagger home,
shivering in the shelter of her shawl.

As they carried the little one yesterday
past the cloister into his bed of clay,
there sounded from the "Church of the Sisters"
very softly a requiem for the dead....

A giant spider-web, the gossamer
of Indian summer draws itself through the world;–
and the Laurenziberg takes pleasure
in its gold-and-bluish habit.

Because it looks across so mildly,
the sun, weary, propped on crutches of rays,
behind its back already early
seeks out its Valladolid.

Comes such a lad, a young one,
mousetraps, sieves on his back,
follows me through the lanes and bridges:
"Sir, I have a ’Turkish hunger.’

Just one krajcar, just one,
for a piece of bread, milost’ pánku!"
There!–And he stammers his thanks to me,
yet gives his legs no rest.

He does not live by mere loafing.–
Smells the roast behind the doors
and yet must go on wiring pans–
empty:–that makes a ’Turkish hunger.’

The old woman upstairs with the hoarse cough,
yes, she is dead.–Who was she?–My God,
she gave us nothing,–to her was given scorn and mockery....
The people scarcely knew her name.

And below stood the black box-wagon.
The last class; when the coffin
jammed, they shoved it in with curses,
and then the door was slammed shut, rough.

The driver lashed his scrawny nags
and drove at a trot, so lightly, to the graveyard,
as though there were not a whole life in there,
full of woe and happiness and dead dreams.

Hard by the altar-rail,
where the lamp burns, the dim one,
sleeps an old, old knight
under a grey escutcheon-slab.

Living, he held his arms up high,
always saw to their gleaming;–
does he know that in dirty slippers
old women hobble over him?

Far off, the shadowed hem
of billowing woods grows dim.
Then only here and there
a tree breaks
the fallow expanse of high cornfields.
In the brightest light
the potato sprouts; then,
a little farther, barley, until the pinewood
bounds the picture.
High above the young growth
a church-cross gleams across, so red-gold;
out of the firs juts the ranger’s hut;–
and over it
arches a sky, bright and blue.

From the field a grave melody sounds;
I know not what comes over me....
"Come here, you Czech girl,
sing me a song of home."–

The girl lays down her sickle,
is here in a whisk and a rush,–
sits herself down at the field’s edge
and sings: "Kde domov můj"....

Now she falls silent. Full of tears,
her eye turned to me,–
she takes my copper kreuzers
and mutely kisses my hand.

* * * * *

DREAM-CROWNED

You may bear your life with dignity;
only the petty does it make small;
beggars may call you brother,
and you can yet be a king.

Though the divine silence of your brow
no red-gold circlet has broken,–
children will bow before you,
blissful dreamers gaze after you in wonder.

Days weave, out of the radiant sun,
your purple and your ermine for you,
and, with sorrow and bliss in their hands,
the nights lie before you on their knees....

My heart is like the forgotten chapel;
on the altar a wild May flaunts itself.
The storm, that insolent companion,
long since broke the little windows in two;
now it creeps in as far as the sacristy
and tugs there at the acolyte’s bell.
The shrill bells’ timid cry of longing
calls to the long-unaccustomed altar-place
the far-off, sorely astonished God.
Then the wind laughs and leaps free through the window.
But the angered one seizes the wave of sound
and shatters it in two upon the flagstones.

And poor wishes kneel in a long row
before the gate and beg at the mossy threshold.
But long since no worshipper passes by.

I think of:
–A little village, simple in peace’s splendor,
a cock crowing in it;
and this little village, lost and gone
in a snow of blossom.
And in the village, with Sunday faces,
a small house;
a fair head nods from the tulle curtains,
stealthily out.
Quick to the door, which, hoarse on its hinge,
cries for help,–
and then, in the room, a soft, soft
scent of lavender....

I feel: a little house were my own;
before its door I sat late,
when behind violet branches,
to the half-faded fiddling of crickets,
the red sun goes down to die.

Like a cap of greenish velvet
the mossy roof sits on my house,
and its small, thick-rammed
and brightly leaded panes flamed
hot greetings after the day.

I dreamed, and my eye reached
already toward the pale stars,–
from the village an Ave trembled,
and a lost butterfly swayed
in the snowy shimmering jasmine.

The weary herd trotted ambling
past, the little shepherd whistled,–
and burying my head in my hand,
I felt how the evening’s rest
struck the strings within my soul.

An old willow mourns,
withered and numb, into the May,–
an old hut cowers,
grey and lonely, hard beside it.

Once there was a nest in the willow,
in the hut a happiness at home;
winter came, and woe,–and both
stayed away....

This rose here, the yellow one,
the boy gave me yesterday;
today I carry it, the same,
out to his fresh grave.

On its petals still lean
bright little drops,–look!
Only today they are tears,–
and yesterday they were dew....

We sat together in the twilight.
"Little mother," I coaxed, "won’t you,
tell me once more the lovely story
of the princess with golden hair?"–

Since little mother died, through dimming days
longing leads me, that pale woman;
and the tale of the lovely princess
she knows, like little mother, exactly....

I wish that they had, instead of the cradle,
made me a little coffin,
then I would be better off, then the lip
would long since be silent in the damp night.

Then never had a wild will
shuddered through the anxious breast,–then
it would be still in the little body,
as still as no one can conceive.

Only a child’s soul would climb
high up to heaven,–so gently....
Why did they not, instead of the cradle,
make me a little coffin?–

That cloud up there I would envy,
that is allowed to float so free!
How it cast upon sunlit heaths
its black shadows down.

How it could darken the sun,
boldly enough, indeed,
when the earth, athirst for light,
grumbled beneath its flight.

All the golden floods of rays
of that sun, I too would
stem! If only for minutes!
Cloud! Yes, I envy you!

I feel: the world, the loud one, sick,
a sudden ruin lately broke,–
and to me alone the world-thought,
the great one, has stayed within the breast.

For it is just as I conceived it;
every discord has stormed itself out:
on golden sun-wings, softly,
green forest-solace floats about me.

When the people, drone-lazy,
trot the old, familiar trot,
I would walk white wandering-ways,
pace through the fragrant pleasance,
grave and lonely as a god.

Walk toward the radiance-sprayed
distances, conscious of a bright reward;–
cool blossoms about the brow,
and, with child-chaste myths,
full the sabbath-still breast.

Do I even know what comes over me?
In the airs a smoldering of scents,
and in the bronze-brown stalks
a lost cricket-song.

In my soul, too, there sounds
deep a tone, a sad-dear one,–
so, perhaps, a child in fever hears
how its dead mother sings.

Already there blinks from sorely tattered sheets
the lovely, chaste nape of the gods
of early-waking Nature,
and only in the deep-lying valleys,
behind violet, bare
thickets, shows itself with false boasting
winter’s white print of the sole.

I go along between willow trees,
by the wet rims of the wheel-ruts,
the cart-road, and the wind is mild.
The sun blazes in the glare of March
and kindles in the dark heart
longing’s white votive candles
before the grace-image of my hope.

Pale-grey sky, from which every color
anxiously faded away.
Wide–a single tan-red streak,
like a burning scourge-scar.

Mad reflections fade and appear.
And in the air
it lies like the dying scent of roses
and like a held-back weeping....

The night lies fragrance-heavy on the park,
and its stars look quietly on
at how the moon’s white barque
would already land in the linden-crown.

Far off I hear the fountain echo
a fairy tale I long forgot,–
and then a soft apple-falling
into the high, motionless grass.

The night-wind floats down from the near hill
and bears, through old rows of oaks,
on its blue butterfly-wing
the heavy scent of the young wine.

In the lap of the silver-bright snow-night
all slumbers there, far and wide,
and only an eternal, wild woe wakes
in the loneliness of one soul.

You ask why the soul keeps silent,
why out into the night
it does not pour it?–It knows: were it to rise from her,
it would put out all the stars.

Evening bells. From the mountains it echoes
back anew in ever fainter
tones. And a little breeze you feel flutter
up from the green valley-floor, a cold one.

In the white meadow-springs it babbles
like the stammer of a childish prayer;
through the black, high fir-forest it goes
like a dusking, a centuries-old one.

Through the seam of a cloud-cleft
evening throws red blood-corals
at the rock-walls.–And they rebound
soundless from the shoulders of the basalt.

World-wide wanderer,
journey on in peace....
so no other knows
human sorrow as you do.

When, with bright shining,
you begin your course,
pain lifts its moist
eyes up to you.

Within them lies–as though
they called to you: understand!–
deep in their depths
a world full of woe....

A thousand tears speak,
eternally unstilled,
and in every one
your image is mirrored!

I would choose myself a fair-haired happiness;
but I am weary of longing and of seeking.–
White waters move through quiet meadows,
and the evening bleeds into the beeches.

Girls wander homeward. Red in the bodice,
roses; from afar their laughter dies away....
And the first stars come again,
and the dreams that make one so sad.

Before me lies a sea of rock,
shrubs half sunk in the rubble,
death-silence.–Mist-drunk
the sky hangs over it.

Only a faint butterfly whirs
restless through the land, the sick one....
Lonely, as a thought of God
strays through the denier’s breast.

The windows glowed on the quiet house,
the whole garden was full of rose-scents.
High over white cloud-chasms
the evening, in the unmoving airs,
spread wide its wings.

A bell-note poured itself over the meadow....
Gentle as a call from heavenly regions,
and secretly, over whisper-filled birches,
I saw the night work the first stars
into the pale blue.

There are such wondrous-white nights
in which all things are silver.
There many a star shimmers so gently,
as though it were bringing pious shepherds
to a new Jesus-child.

Wide, as though strewn with thick
diamond-dust, appear field and flood,
and into hearts, dream-disposed,
climbs a chapel-less faith
that quietly works its wonders.

Like a giant wonder-flower, full of scent,
the world flaunts itself, on whose petal-husk,
a butterfly with a blue enamel of wings,
the May-night hangs.

Nothing stirs; only the silver feeler gleams....
Then its wing bears it, the early-faded one,
toward morning, where from a fire-red aster
it drinks its dying....

How, deepening every feeling,
a sweet urge stirs the breast,
when the May-night, star-dripping,
lays itself on mouse-still squares–

Then you steal along on a gentle sole
and rave up toward the bright blue,
and great as a night-violet
your dark soul opens wide....

O were there but stars that do not pale
when day already hems the east;
of such stars beyond compare
my soul has often dreamed.

Of stars that blink so mildly
that there the eye may land,
the eye grown weary of sun-drinking
on a golden summer day.

And did such stars indeed
steal high into the world’s machinery,–
they would have to be holy
to hidden love and to all poets.

I am so sore, so sore, as though
the whole world must pass away in grey,
as though my beloved kissed me
and said: Goodbye for ever.

As though I were dead, and in the brain
wild torment burrowed in me still,
because from the burial-mound a wench
stole my last, pale rose....

Faint through the valleys’ smoking haze
evening sways on golden shoes,–
the butterfly that hangs dreaming on the stalk
knows not, for bliss, what to do.

Everything drinks itself–ah!–full of the stillness.–
How then the soul swells,
so that, a shimmering husk, it
lays itself round the dark of the world.

A remembering, which I call holy,
shines through my innermost mind,
as the marble-white of the gods’ images
glows through the dusk of consecrated groves.

The remembering of bygone blisses,
the remembering of the dead May,–
incense in their white hands,
my quiet days stride past it....

Believe me that I, weary from sickness,
want no loud spring any more,–
want only a sun-bright,
treetop-red early-autumn day.

I want delight, the jubilant-shrill,
no more back into the breast,–
want only death-chamber-stillness
within–for my dead happiness.

* * * * *

LOVING

And how may love have come to you?
Came it like a sunning, a blossom-snowing,
came it like a praying?–Tell:

A happiness loosed itself, shining, out of heavens
and hung with folded wings, great,
upon my blossoming soul....

That was the day of the white chrysanthemums,–
I almost dreaded its heavy splendor....
And then, then you came to take my soul
deep in the night.

I was so afraid, and you came dear and soft,–
I had just been thinking of you in a dream.
You came, and soft as a fairy-tale melody
the night rang out....

To be together with you one May day,
and, the two of us, to wander lost
through the scent-smoking flame-rows of the blossoms
to the arbor of white jasmine.

And from there out into the May-bliss to gaze,
every wish in the soul so still....
And to build a happiness amid the May-joy,
a great one,–that is what I want....

I know not what comes over me....
Know not to what bliss I listen,
my heart is gone, as in a daze,
and longing is like a song.

And my girl has merry blood
and has her hair full of sun
and the eyes of the Madonna
who still today works wonders.

Do you still think how I brought you apples
and smoothed your gold hair soft and gently?
You know, that was when I still liked to laugh,
and you were then still a child.

Then I grew grave. In my heart there burned
a young hoping and an old grief....
At the time when once the governess
took the "Werther" out of your hands.

Spring called. I kissed your cheeks,
your eye looked at me, wide and blissful.
That was a Sunday. Far-off bells rang,
and lights went through the pinewood....

We sat, both of us, in thought
in the vine-leaf dusk–you and I–
and above us, in the fragrant tendrils,
a bumblebee hummed itself somewhere to silence.

Reflections, colored circles, kept
a fleeting rest in your hair....
I said nothing but, once, softly:
"What beautiful eyes you have."

Little blonde head behind the panes,
it stands out so finely,–
does it star out into the drift of dust-motes
or in toward me?

Is it the little head, the dear one,
that holds me captive,
or the play of dust-motes
there in the sunny world?

Neither looks across to the other.
Secretly, its brow full of peace,
evening strides on past....
And we? We only watch it go.–

Liese turns just sixteen today.
She finds a four-leaf in the clover....
Far off something crowds like a band of boys:
the dandelions with blond hair,
tended by the starry hemlock.

There behind the hemlock crouches giant Pan,
the bursting, loose-living fellow.
Now he stealthily sees Liese drawing near
and laughs and rolls across the meadow-floor
the surging wave of the wind....

I dream deep in the vine-tangle
with my little blonde one;
her small hand, elf-slender, trembles
in the hot constraint of mine.

As a yellow squirrel darts,
the light flits by in reflection,
and violet shadow daubs
its blots into her white dress.

In our breast lies, snowed over with happiness,
a gold-sunny falling-silent.
Then, in its coat of velvet,
a bumblebee comes humming a blessing....

It is an ocean full of lights
that the beloved’s eye encloses,
when, from the flood of dream-visions,
the chaste soul overflows.

Then I tremble before the force of the shimmer
as a child that halts in its running
when, before the splendor of the Christmas-tree room,
the double door swings soundlessly open.

I was still a boy. I know, it was said:
Today cousin Olga comes to visit.
Then I saw you nearing on the shimmering gravel,
pressed into your little dress, the faded one.

At table one sat later by order and rank
and moderately refreshed the throat;
and as my glass rang against yours,
a rift went through my soul.

I looked, astonished, into your face and forgot
to join myself to the others’ chatter,
for deep in my dry throat there sat,
choking me, a whimpering weeping.

We walked in the park.–You spoke of happiness
and kissed my lips long,
and I gave you back fevered kisses
on the brow, the mouth, and the cheek.

And then you softly closed your eyes,
to fathom the bliss blind....
And in my heart I sensed: there you would
most gladly have died in your sins....

The night, in its dress of silver sparks,
scatters a handful of dreams,
and they fill, with drunkenness,
my deep soul to the brim.

As children see a Christmas
full of glitter and golden nuts,–
I see you go through the May-night
and kiss all the flowers.

Already the day had died. The forest was enchanted,
and under the ferns the cyclamens bled,
the tall firs glowed, shaft by shaft,
there was a wind,–and heavy scents came on.
You were wearied by our long way,
I softly said your sweet name:
then, with a bliss-wild force, there bored
out of your heart’s white lily-seed
the fire-lily of passion.

Red was the evening–and your mouth so red,
as my lips, longing-hot, found it,
and those flames that suddenly blazed us through,
they licked at the envious garments....
The forest was still, and the day was dead.
But to us the Savior had risen again,
and with the day died envy and need.
The moon came, great, to land upon our hills,
and softly happiness stepped from a white boat.

The lilacs shone in the garden,
the evening was full of an Ave,–
it was then that we went apart from each other
in grief and rancor.

The sun had died in hot fever-dreams
behind grey slopes, far off,
and now, behind the blossoming trees,
your white dress, too, faded out.

I watched the shimmer fade, little by little,
and dreaded, trembling like a fearful child
that has long looked into a bright light:
Am I blind now?–

Often you seem to me a child, a small one,–
then I feel so grave and old,–
when only very softly your bell-pure
laughter echoes within me.

When then, in great childlike wonder,
your eye opens, deep and hot,–
I would kiss you and murmur to you
the loveliest fairy tales I know.

My soul lusts after a happiness,
after a short, foolish wonder-madness....
In the whirl of springs and the whisper of pines
I hear it drawing near....

And when, from hills that hem themselves in purple,
the silver boat swims out into pale blue,–
then under shadow-heavy blossoming trees
I see it drawing near.

In a white dress; like the love, the dead one,
who walked with me on Sunday through dust and shrub,–
that one flower at the heart, the red one,–
did it wear that too?...

We walked under the autumn-bright beeches,
both our eyes red with the ache of parting...
"My darling, come, let us go looking for flowers."
I said, afraid: "They are dead already."

My word was nothing but weeping.–In the ethers
a pale star already stood, smiling childishly.
The faint day went, dying, to the fathers,
and a jackdaw cried from afar–

In spring, or in a dream,
I met you, once,
and now we walk together through the autumn day,
and you press my hand and weep.

Do you weep for the racing clouds?
For the blood-red leaves? Hardly.
I feel it: you were once happy
in spring, or in a dream....

She had no story of any kind,
eventless went year upon year–
all at once it came with loud light....
love, or whatever it was.

Then suddenly, fearful, she saw it trickle away,–
there lies a pond before her house....
Like a dream it seems to begin,
and like a fate it goes out.

One noticed: autumn had come. The day was quickly
dead in its own blood.
In the twilight only the flower still glimmered, garish,
on the little one’s bent hat.

With her threadbare glove she stroked
my hand, coaxing and soft.–
No one in the lane but she and I....
And she feared: You are leaving? "I am leaving."

There she stood, her little head full of the distress of parting,
burying it in the cloth of my coat....
From the little hat the red rose nodded,
and the evening smiled wearily.

Sometimes it comes to me: after grief and toil
fate will yet bless me,
when, in a festive Sunday morning,
laughing girls cross my way....
Gladly I hear them laugh.

Long then the laughter lies in my ear,
never, I fancy, can I forget it...
When the day has lost itself behind the slope,
I would sing it to myself... Meanwhile
the stars up above are already singing it....

It is long ago,–it is long....
when–I can no longer say....
a bell rang, a lark sang–
and a heart beat so blissfully.
The sky so bright above the young-wood slope,
the lilac had borne its blossoms,–
and, in a Sunday dress, a girl, slender,
her eye full of wondering questions....
It is long ago,–it is long....

ADVENT

ADVENT

The wind in the winter forest
drives the flock of flakes like a shepherd,
and many a fir senses how soon
it will be holy, bright with candle-light,
and listens out. Toward the white roads
it stretches its branches–ready,
and braves the wind and grows toward
the one night of glory.

GIFTS

This is my struggle:
consecrated to longing,
to roam through all the days.
Then, strong and broad,
with a thousand root-threads
to grip deep into life–
and through suffering
to ripen far out of life,
far out of time!

You, my holy solitude,
you are so rich and pure and wide
like an awakening garden.
My holy solitude, you–
keep the golden doors shut
before which the wishes wait.

The brook has quiet melodies,
and far off are dust and town;
the treetops beckon to and fro
and make me so weary.

The wood is wild, the world is wide,
my heart is bright and large;
the pale solitude holds
my head in its lap.

I love forgotten wayside Madonnas
who wait, at a loss, for someone or other,
and girls who, by lonely wells,
flowers in their fair hair, go dreaming.

And children who sing into the sun
and, wide-eyed with wonder, gaze up at the stars,
and the days, when they bring me songs,
and the nights, when they stand in blossom.

Were you a child in a happy throng,
then surely you cannot grasp
how it came to me to hate the day
as an everlasting, hostile danger.
I was so strange and so forsaken
that only deep in blossom-pale
May nights was I secretly blessed.

By day I wore the narrow ring
of cowardly duty in pious wise.
But at evening I slipped from the circle,
my little window rattled–clink–
they did not know it. A butterfly,
my longing set out on its journey,
because it went softly to ask
the far stars after its home.

in your fineness beyond compare,
how I loved you even as a child.
I took you for a token of love
that, by silver-still ponds,
the elves hand one another in the cool night,
when all the children are asleep.

And because dear little grandmother
often read to me of wishing-wands,
I dreamed, you gentle-souled one,
that in your fine fibers flowed
the cunning power of the divining-rod–
and I sought you in the summer grass.

Often, on the everyday journey, I think
of the night, and that a dream does me good
which comes with lips, cool and soft,
to kiss my sultry brow.

Then I long to see the stars
shining.–The day is meager and small,
the night is wide, has silver borders
and could be a legend.

it would have to be one of those bright
spring days, when the sick
are brought out before the dark doors.
In the lilac is a squabbling of sparrows,
because none can manage a proper song.
The brook, whose every bond has fallen away,
knows not what to do for joy, and leaps
right up to the boarded planks,
behind them flower-beds, ringed with gravel,
and flowers blooming and birches swaying.
And before the little house, gold-gabled,
about which spring winds its tendrils
like love-soft arms–
a fair-haired child who, lost in thought,
sings the loveliest of my songs.

On many a day my soul is still:
a house of God from which all the worshippers have gone.
One Angel only fends off, with its golden wings,
the incense that, with its soft rings,
would fetter the jubilation of its arms.

Dreaming icons of the saints darken within
in helpless, longing will-to-be-heard:
they wait for Sunday with its full
pews and the great rolling of the organ–
and pale hanging lamps sway to and fro.

Do you call that soul, the thing that so timidly chirps
in you? That, like the sound of fools’ bells,
begs for applause and woos for dignity,
and at last, poor, dies a poor death
in the incense-evening of Gothic chapels,–
do you call that soul?

When I behold the blue night, snowed over by May,
in which the worlds travel their wide ways,
it comes to me: I carry a piece of eternity
in my breast. It shakes and it cries
and would go up and circle with them....
And that is soul.

The tall firs breathe hoarsely
in the winter snow, and more billowing
their sheen nestles about every twig.
The white roads grow softer,
the cozy parlors more hushed.

There the clock sings, the children shiver:
in the green stove a log cracks
and tumbles in bright blazing storms,–
and outside, in the glitter of flakes,
the white day grows toward eternity.

The evening comes, having walked from far
through the snowed-in, quiet fir-wood.
Then it presses its winter-cheeks,
listening, against every window.

And every house grows still;
the old folk muse in their armchairs,
the mothers are like queens,
the children will not begin
their play. The serving-maids spin
no more. The evening listens inward,
and inward they listen out.

The weather was gray and garish;
the evening is brighter and softer.
Surely some emperor is coming:
all the houses are bright.
And so festive and soft
was the evening’s chiming;
the old folk gaze into the sky,
and the children are rich.

The sun burns out at the rim of the sky.
Through harvest-impoverished clods
the women wade out into the fields.

By the shimmering-away rows of rails,
by the signalman’s little house, summer-alone,
sunflowers muse.

You poor old chapel
with your dust-covered finery–
spring is building a bright
church beside you.

I

Strange calling. And we choose
a gondola, black and slender:
a quiet gliding past the piles
along a marble city.

Still. The boatmen only talk
among themselves. The oars rustle softly,
and out of churches and canals
a strange night beckons to us.

And the black path grows quieter,
a far-off Ave wafts upon the air,–
truly: I am a dead emperor,
and they are steering me to the tomb.

It always seems to me that the quiet
gondolas travel through the canals
to receive someone or other;
for the waiting lasts long,
and the people are poor and sick,
and the children are like orphans.

Long the palaces wait
for the lords, for the guests,
and the people would see crowns.
On St. Mark’s Square I would
often stand and ask someone or other
after the far-off festival....

III

My oar sang:
Poppé, row on!
A people of slaves
crowds at the harbor
about sober feasts,
and the palaces
cannot sleep.
Poppé, row on!

Icy stillness
in marble limbs,
with weary eyelids
the squares shudder.
In the net of alleys
the lowly beg.
Poppé, row on!

Tell me, do you still
know of the dead
who gave commands here
in costly crowns?
Where do they dwell now,
the purple-clad?

Poppé, row on!

The Ave wafts from the towers;
still you hear the churches telling their tale;
but the palaces on quiet canals
betray nothing more.

And past the dream-repose
of their sleeping brows there sway
quiet gondolas, like black thoughts,
toward the evening.

Late path. The huts crouch,
and the dull village falls asleep.
Solemn towers I see endure;
far out of white showers of blossom
grows their lostness-to-the-world.

Evening-fire on fallow battlements,
and the wind runs through the hall.
And for whom, within the castle court,
the fountains still keep running–
no one down in the valley knows.

The churchyard high in the summer snow
belongs to the mountain farm;
as over a highland lake
peace keeps watch above it.
There no blossom knows the ray of spring.
The turf cowers, early-frost-pale,
the crosses poor, the mounds bare,
and softly, seldom, the number grows:
once.

The way is bad, the way is narrow.
In the little village is little choice
and little joy and little pain,–
so they ring so far off in the valley:
once,–once,–once.–

On the mountain I know a little church
standing defiant, with a rusted knob;
like monks in gray cowls
cypresses climb upward.

Forgotten saints dwell
there, lonely, in the altar-shrine;
the evening hands them crowns
in through the hollow windows.

The high snow-peak, jagged-sharp,
flares up like a crown of walls
into which laughing Nero,
the morning, has flung his torch.

And as the flames stretch up
into the blue, to faded stars,
the valley wakes in a beautiful terror
and surfaces up out of dream and dew.

You weary, moldering mill,
your moss-grown wheel keeps holiday,
out of the olive-coolness
the evening watches you.

The brook sings, as if lost,
after the songs of men;
deeper over your ears
you pull your defiant roof.

The villages are like a garden.
In towers of strange kinds
the bells ring as if in pain.
Shore-castles wait
and gaze through black embrasures,
weary, upon the noonday lake.

And quick little waves play,
and golden steamers keel
softly their bright course;
and behind the far shores
rise the many, many
silver mountains.

The day is so death-sick;
wearily it pours from golden chalices
wine into the mountain snow.
High up, timid, shy as a deer,
a star above the lakeside sloe,
and dainty, trembling little whiles
lattice the evening lake.

FINDS

When, like a soft spreading of wings,
something sways in the late airs,–
I would walk on and on
into the valley where, nestled deep
against the sunset-red solitudes,
longing lies like a garden.

Perhaps I may find you there,
and shyly your first labor
will bind up my aching wishes for me,
you will lead me deep into the green–
and secretly white bindweed
will bloom upon my dusty staff.

I would meet you out of doors
when May heaps wonder upon wonder,
and when a soft blessing of souls
drips down from every bough.

When, up to the wayside cross, the slender,
jasmine stretches its white arms
and gently overlays the eternal grief-thought
on the brow of Christ.

I had to think, unwaveringly,
how once, among black pines,
I found the deep spring musing,
when I stood before your beauty
and through the dark lines of your parting
dreamed your face like a land.

There stole from the edge of your lips
a smile upon a lost path–
quite softly. The others scarcely marked it.
So a leaf drifts from the blossoming tree:
only one beholds the grace of spring,
and he who beholds it is as in a dream.

Strange is what your lips say,
strange is your hair, strange is your dress,
strange is what your eyes ask,
and even out of our wild days
no soft lapping of waves can reach
to your deep strangeness.

You are like those painted figures
that, above the empty altar-cupboard,
still fold their hands,
still hold old garlands,
still keep soft miracles–
when long since there are no miracles.

You are so strange, you are so pale.
Only sometimes there glows upon your cheek
a hopeless homesickness
for the lost realm of roses.

Then your eye, deep and clear, longs
out of all the must, all the toil,
into the land where nothing but quiet blooming
was the work of your hands.

You know, I want to steal away
softly from the loud circle
once I first know the pale
stars above the oaks
in bloom.

I would choose out paths
that few ever tread
in pale evening meadows–
and no dream but this:
that you come along.

With you it is homelike:
timid clocks strike
as if from far-off days.
Come, say a loving thing to me:
only not aloud.

A gate swings somewhere
out there in the drift of blossom.
The evening listens at the panes.
Let us stay quiet:
no one knows us so.

The night draws secretly through the curtain’s folds
forgotten sunshine from your hair.
See, I want nothing but to hold your hands
and to be still and good and full of peace.

Then the soul grows in me until, in shards,
it bursts the everyday; it grows so wonder-wide:
on its dawn-red breakwaters
the first waves of infinity break and die.

You, hands that forever give,
must bloom from the joy of others.
Tender as a tender quiver of birch,
there stays from the giving-experience
a trembling of rhythms within.

These are the hands with the slender
wrists that quietly toil;
and did they know of cathedrals,
they would have to blossom holy,
in wound-marks, before all the people.

You have wandered through delusion and woe,
you come out of my darkest days,
you have flung yourself a bridge
across to me over guilt and snow.

You steer me, smiling, with a soft command,
and on your crown-golden locks
you carry fleeting feather-flakes
into the merry death of spring.

I would show you the spring
that has a hundred wonders.
The spring belongs to the woods
and does not come into the town.

Only those who, far out of the cold
alleys, walk two by two
and hold each other by the hands–
may see it once.

And this spring makes you paler,
your foot longs for the wide meadows,
your song grows soft, your word grows gentler,
and your hands grow richer
with every wave, with every greeting.

You take, out of the scent-heavy chest,
your confirmation dress, boldly,
and carry it into the wild paths
and deck yourself for the great grace
that bids your soul to bloom.

It comes to me: I must bring you the bridal-night posy
far out of the evening.
I go out into the golden hour,
and the windows shine on the last house,
where playing children sing.

And I pass by the lonely house
where singing children dwell,
and my wandering grows and grows into the May
and cannot turn back,–and the blossoms, forgive me,
I wind them all into crowns for myself.

Are you so weary? I will lead you softly
out of this din that long since vexed me too.
We are made sore in the constraint of these times.
See, behind the wood through which we walk shuddering,
the evening already waits like a bright castle.

Come with me. Let no morrow know,
and no light in the house cowers before your beauty....
Your fragrance goes like a spring through the pillows:
the day has torn all my dreams to shreds,–
you, wind a wreath from them once again.

You:
a castle on wave-heavy,
satin-pale evening seas–
and in its column-stately
halls there wait praise and pomp
to honor us:

because we both return–
without crowns and with empty
hands–
but young.

Purple-red roses I would
bind for my table,
and, lost beneath the lindens,
somewhere find a girl,
clever and fair and dreamy.

I would clasp her hands,
would kneel before the child,
and let my mouth, the longing-pale,
be kissed by lips
that are spring itself.

A laying of hands one in another,
a long kiss on a cool mouth,
and then; on shimmering white paths
we wander through the meadow-ground.

Through soft, white rain of blossom
the day sends us its first kiss,–
it comes to me: we are walking toward God,
who through the wide land must come.

You would choose yourself a page?
Come, choose me, my queen.
There rings to me out of old adventures
a song in strings and sense.

I will lead you into the white castle
in which I myself am king,
and sing behind a thousand doors
for my white queen.

Evening has made me weary,
and in my senses shrill
small wishes with the crickets.

Where the pale land flattens,
lie nothing but white villas
behind red splendor of roses.

They lie as if on soft watch,
white villas at the still
lake-edge of the spring night.

What do you tear me out of my pale, blue
hours into the whirling circle’s
confused glittering?
I will look no longer on your madness.
I would, like a child in the sickroom,
lonely, with a secret smile, softly,
softly–build days and dreams.

I was in such pain. I saw you pale and anxious.
That was in a dream. And your soul rang.

Quite softly my soul rang along with it,
and the two souls sang each other; I suffered.

Then peace grew deep in me. I lay
in the silver heaven between dream and day.

How my dreams cry out for you.
We have grown, with effort, strangers to each other;
now it would murder my soul,
this poor, anxious being-alone.

No hope that bellies out the sails.
Only this wide, white stillness,
into which my deedless will,
in breathless dread, listens.

And you were beautiful. In your eye
night and sun seemed victoriously reconciled.
And majesty wrapped you, like an ermine,
about: so my love came to crown you.
And my night-pale longing stood,
white-filleted as the priestess of Vesta,
at the columned edge of your soul’s temple,
and, smiling, strewed white blossoms there.

You have such great eyes, child.
You surely often see, at night, figures
that, strange and pale, in marble-cold
dream-hands hold red crowns
about which a glow runs softly.
Then your gaze by day is as if blind,
and your soul as if cloven,
then you dread the workaday old folk
when wishes unfold in you
that to all others are madness.

Then longing has awakened in you,
proudly to flee the vain shriekers
who, clumsily, with hands, dull and leaden,
drone upon your silver soul
the crazed song that makes one mortal;
to flee into a blue night
in which all the treetops keep festival, listening;
to unveil the hymn of the limbs
and, shyly, in the lap of white ponds,
to find their naked splendor.

You looked into high courtyard walls
and played, quiet, in the dull room;
an ununderstood mourning lay
upon your pale childhood dream.

And your days were leaden,
the mother sick, the father coarse;
and sometimes a cripple came droning–
then you listened and wept so.

What can the summer avail you now?
Weary, as with a shy beat of wings,
your homesick eyes stray through
the shoreless day of sun.

She was:
an unwanted child, cast out
even from the mother’s night-prayer,
and forever far from that Great One
that goes, giving, through the ages.

She wished for little–and only seldom
there came over her, like a weeping,
a longing for a land of purple tents,
for a strange melody,

for white roads that do not raise dust–
then she bent roses into her hair,
and yet could never believe in love,
even when it was deep in spring.

When I looked earnestly into your eye,
your word often rang so sorrow-sick,
like a soft lute of love
that once a master built, alone,
when his soul sang longing.

Since then she learned light songs
and gladly sounded them to day and dance,–
then a dreamer seizes her limbs:
and, as if waking, she weeps again
the homesickness of her homeland.

Yes, in earlier days, when I thought of you,
what a wonder it was: a May awoke
about you in a glory of haloes,
and my longing dreamed, softly,
a garland about your brow.

Now I see you; you sink your weeping
into the heart of the autumn-shrouded groves;
along the pale milestones there steals
a sore sunset.

I walked through a land, through a sorrowful land.
As on an empty cradle a cradle-band
lay the pale river on the flat sand,
and over it, out of wet mist-garments,
the willow reached its hand of the dead.

I was so sorrowful. I stared and stood.
I saw you crouching by the wayside.
Once I had known you and happiness.
You wept, burrowing and unwavering,
and I asked you: is this your homeland?

You nodded, you nodded as if dream-bound....
Then I named you again as once before;
but your image ran out of my grasp, your image vanished.
The poplars charred in the evening-fire,
and death went red through your homeland.

You know that I plait weary roses for you
into your hair that a sore wind softly stirs–
do you see the moon, like a true-silver
memorial coin, and an image is stamped upon it:
a woman who, smiling, bears dark thorns–
that is the sign of dead nights of love.

Do you feel the roses dying on your brow?
And each lets go its sister with a shudder
and must, alone, decay and spoil,
and all fall sallow into your lap.
There they are dead. Their sorrow was soft and great.
Come into the night. And we are heirs of roses.

Can you still play the old songs?
Play, my darling. They blow through my woe
like the ships with silver keels
that toward secret island-goals
drift on the quiet evening lake.

And they land on the blossoming shore,
and the spring is there so young.
And there, on a lonely path,
my weary memory finds
forgotten gods in waiting grace.

Where are the lilies from the tall glass
that your hand never forgot to tend?
Dead already?
Where has the joy of your cheeks gone,
that seemed to glory like a whole springtime–
Burnt out?
And where is our happiness, so great and pure,
that clasped your hair bright like a Madonna’s halo
About?
That too is dead. Today we weep for it,
and tomorrow the frost comes into our chamber–
And then?

MOTHERS

I often long for a mother,
for a quiet woman with white-parted hair.
In her love my I first came to bloom;
she could thwart that wild hatred
that crept, icy, into my soul.

Then we would sit close beside each other,
a fire would purr softly in the hearth.
I would listen to what the dear lip speaks,
and peace would hover over the tea-urn
as a moth about the lamplight.

It often comes to me that I must ask:
You, mother, what did you sing
before sleep warmly kissed the cheeks
of your pale, fair-haired boy?

Had you very much grief in those days?
And do you know how you would spring up
when, to your pale, fair-haired boy,
in deep dream a weeping came?

I walk beneath red boughs
and seek a late bouquet.
I know not, for joy, where to turn,
all is so new to me, so my own:
my love is weary and is at home.

Now my girl is vain in earnest,
since her bodice draws out wider,
and since a wonder befalls her:
soon she will have broad brown braids
and will sit and sing a cradle-song.

Softly a first blossoming wafts
from the linden trees,
and, bold in my dreams,
I see you in the leafy green,
lovely in the first mother-labor,
hemming a little child’s shirt.

You sing a little song the while,
and your song rings into the May:
Bloom, bloom, blossoming tree,
deep in the dear garden.
Bloom, bloom, blossoming tree,
the loveliest dream of my longing
I will await here.

Bloom, bloom, blossoming tree,
summer will repay you.
Bloom, bloom, blossoming tree.
See, I hem a hem
here with rays of sun.

Bloom, bloom, blossoming tree,
soon comes the ripening.
Bloom, bloom, blossoming tree,
the loveliest dream of my longing
teach me to grasp it.

You sing a little song the while,
and your song is nothing but May.

And the blossoming tree will bloom,
bloom before all the trees,
sunny your hem will glow,
and, transfigured in the leafy green,
your young mother-labor
will hem a little child’s shirt.

And if they speak to you now of shame,
since pain and care drive through you,–
o, smile, woman! You stand at the edge
of the wonder that will consecrate you.

Do you feel within you the shy swelling,
and body and soul grow wide for you–
o, pray, woman! These are the waves
of eternity.

Why do you weep, mother? Though the cupboard
be beggar-empty,–be of good cheer!
I am your fair-haired crown-child,
and you have noble blood.

For I watched, you do not know it,–
how you, so often, late,
by the morning-weary lamplight
sewed your royal robe.

So you are a queen,
and be not anxious and afraid–
and until I come into my own strength,
our royal day will come.

"Darling, did you call?"
It was a word in the wind.
"How many steep steps
are there still up to you, my child?"–
There her voice found the stars,
but did not find the daughter.

In the valley, in a deep tavern,
a last light went out.

Sometimes she feels: life is great,
wilder, like streams that foam,
wilder, like storm in the trees.
And softly she lets the hours go
and gives her soul to the dreams.

Then she wakes. There stands a star
still above the quiet land,
and her house has walls all white–
then she knows: life is strange and far–
and folds her aging hands.