Venice masks

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Longing - Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff

The stars were so golden and glistening;
I stood by the window alone,
To songs of the post-horn listening,
O’er silent moorland blown.
My heart within me was burning.
“To travel—ah, what delight!”
I thought in my secret yearning,
In the glorious summer night.

Two merry youths were walking
By the slope of yonder hill.
I heard their singing and talking,
When all about was still:
Of woodlands murmuring mildly,
Ravines from the dizziest height,
Of waterfalls that wildly
Pour into the forest’s night.

They sang of marble shining,
Of garden walls o’er-grown,
Where vines are rampantly twining,
Of moon-lit palaces lone,
Where maids at the windows are rousing
The music from lutes with delight,
Where murmuring fountains are drowsing
In the glorious summer night.

Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788 - 1857) Poland (orginally German Prussia)
Translated by Margarete Münsterberg
Source: A Harvest of German Verse. Edited and Translated by Margarete Münsterberg. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1916

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