The Poems of Goethe, Translated in the Original Metres · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1775. ----- MAY SONG.
How fair doth Nature Appear again! How bright the sunbeams! How smiles the plain! The flow'rs are bursting From ev'ry bough, And thousand voices Each bush yields now. And joy and gladness Fill ev'ry breast! Oh earth!--oh sunlight! Oh rapture blest! Oh love! oh loved one! As golden bright, As clouds of morning On yonder height! Thou blessest gladly The smiling field,-- The world in fragrant Vapour conceal'd. Oh maiden, maiden, How love I thee! Thine eye, how gleams it! How lov'st thou me! The blithe lark loveth Sweet song and air, The morning flow'ret Heav'n's incense fair, As I now love thee With fond desire, For thou dost give me Youth, joy, and fire, For new-born dances And minstrelsy. Be ever happy, As thou lov'st me! LITTLE leaves and flow'rets too, Scatter we with gentle hand, Kind young spring-gods to the view, Sporting on an airy band. Zephyr, bear it on the wing, Twine it round my loved one's dress; To her glass then let her spring, Full of eager joyousness. Roses round her let her see, She herself a youthful rose. Grant, dear life, one look to me! 'Twill repay me all my woes, What this bosom feels, feel thou. Freely offer me thy hand; Let the band that joins us now Be no fragile rosy band! THIS page a chain to bring thee burns, That, train'd to suppleness of old, On thy fair neck to nestle, yearns, In many a hundred little fold. To please the silly thing consent! 'Tis harmless, and from boldness free; By day a trifling ornament, At night 'tis cast aside by thee. But if the chain they bring thee ever, Heavier, more fraught with weal or woe, I'd then, Lisette, reproach thee never If thou shouldst greater scruples show.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.