A Winter Journey in the Harz (1777)

 

As the buzzard aloft

On heavy daybreak cloud

With easy pinion rests

Searching for prey,

May my song hover.

 

For a god has

Duly to each

His path prefixed,

And the fortunate man

Runs fast and joyfully

To his journey's end;

But he whose heart

Misfortune constricted

Struggles in vain

To break from the bonds

Of the brazen thread

Which the shears, so bitter still,

Cut once alone.

 

Into grisly thickets

The rough beasts run,

And with the sparrows

The rich long since have

Sunk in their swamps.

 

Easy it is to follow that car

Which Fortune steers,

Like the leisurely troop that rides

The fine highroads

Behind the array of the Prince.

 

But who is it stands aloof?

His path is lost in the brake,

Behind him the shrubs

Close and he's gone,

Grass grows straight again,

The emptiness swallows him.

 

O who shall heal his agony then

In whom each balm turned poison,

Who drank hatred of man

From the very fullness of love?

First held now holding in contempt,

In secret he consumes

His own particular good

In selfhood unsated.

 

If on your psaltery,

Father of love, there sounds

One note his ear can hear,

Refresh with it then his heart!

Open his clouded gaze

To the thousand fountainheads

About him as he thirsts

In the desert!

 

You who give joys that are manifold,

To each his overflowing share,

Bless the companions that hunt

On the spoor of the beasts

With young exuberance

Of glad desire to kill,

Tardy avengers of outrage

For so long repelled in vain

By the cudgeling countryman.

 

But hide the solitary man

In your sheer gold cloud!

Till roses flower again

Surround with winter-green

The moistened hair,

O love, of your poet!

 

With your lantern glowing

You light his way

Over the fords by night,

On impassable tracks

Through the void countryside;

With daybreak thousand-hued

Into his heart you laugh;

With the mordant storm

You bear him aloft;

Winter streams plunge from the crag

Into his songs,

And his altar of sweetest thanks

Is the snow-hung brow

Of the terrible peak

People in their imaginings crowned

With spirit dances.

 

You stand with heart unplumbed

Mysteriously revealed

Above the marveling world

And you look from clouds

On the kingdoms and magnificence

Which from your brothers' veins beside you

With streams you water.

 

 

Translated by Christopher Middleton