Fly hence, poor wretch, whoe'er thou art,
Condemned to cast about,
All shipwreck in thy own weak heart,
For comfort from without!
A fever in these pages burns
Beneath the calm they feign;
A wounded human spirit turns,
Here, on its bed of pain.
Yes, though the virgin mountain air
Fresh through these pages blows;
Though to these leaves the glaciers spare
The soul of their mute snows;
Though here a mountain murmur swells
Of many a dark-boughed pine;
Though, as you read, you hear the bells
Of the high-pasturing kine,—
Yet through the hum of torrent lone,
And brooding mountain bee,
There sobs I know not what ground-tone
Of human agony.
Is it for this, because the sound
Is fraught too deep with pain,
That, Obermann! the world around
So little loves thy strain?
Some secrets may the poet tell,
For the world loves new ways:
To tell too deep ones is not well,—
It knows not what he says.
Yet, of the spirits who have reigned
In this our troubled day,
