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.

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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