And the morning star above us that his trembling cold rays sends,
This whole earth, the lake, the heavens, they are all our loving friends.
Thou may’st now forget the rudder, thou may’st throw away the oars,
Let’s be taken where it listeth by the wind that gently soars,
Let’s be led on wheresoever, our dear aim we cannot miss,
If to life or death we’re led on, wheresoe’er we go is bliss!“
Fancy, O my dearest fancy! When I am alone with thee
How oft dost thou make me wander in the groves, on fields, on sea!
How to all these unknown countries couldst thou ever wander so?
When did all these strange things happen? Many centuries ago?
Now there is no time with full heart thy beloved to caress,
To embrace and kiss her, feeling in her eyes love’s blessedness;
Now her hand thou scarcely touchest, and at once through opened door.
All her relatives assembled in a congress in will pour,
Soon aside thy head thou turnest, casting down thy humble look…
In this world is there no longer left for love a quiet nook?
With this life I’m sick and weary… Not that I its cups have sipped,
But its misery’s so bitter, in its prose to be so dipped!
Fools, how can you cry and suffer, sanctify with holy tear
This vain instinct, common impulse, that e’en birds feel twice a year?
No, you do not live, another loves, inspires you,—he but lives,
He with your own mouth is laughing, he to all the impulse gives,
All your lives are like the waters, waves in never ending surge
In a stream that is eternal, this stream is the Demiurge.
Don’t you feel that you see wonders in these dull desires? O fools!
That your love is but another’s, that all these are but the tools
To fulfil another’s purpose, serving only nature’s need?
That this all is but the cradle of new life, of hate the seed?
Don’t you see your joy and laughter in your sons cause only pain?
That in all our veins is running still the guilty blood of Cain?
Much ado of human voices, nothing but a puppet show,
They tell jokes, mere words like parrots, but their meaning do not know…
The same actor through the ages one same thing again will say,
Endlessly soliloquizing, in an everlasting play.
