| |
I ALL over, over—and my eyes | |
| Afar are straying in despair. | |
| All over—but the sea-gull flies, | |
| My plaintive escort, through the air. | |
| |
| The gull returns: far, far away | 5 |
| I leave my fatherland behind; | |
| An outcast from my home I stray | |
| Where I my grave had hoped to find. | |
| |
| When yesterday, in parting pain, | |
| Enraged the linden bough I shook, | 10 |
| And heard the partridge in the grain, | |
| A fever-spell my limbs o’ertook. | |
| |
| My ship is pitching, tossed by waves, | |
| The mates are singing while they sail. | |
| My heart is tossed, it storms and raves, | 15 |
| And homeless, I must feel the gale. | |
| |
II ’Mid waves there gleams the pallid strand; | |
| Afar through blurring tears is seen | |
| The seacoast of my fatherland. | |
| Exhausted, by the mast I lean. | 20 |
| |
| The lilacs bloom, the swallows stray, | |
| The starlings’ chatter fills the air, | |
| The organ-grinder grinds his lay, | |
| The wind’s light kiss is on my hair. | |
| |
| Before the guardhouse soldiers stand, | 25 |
| And arm in arm laugh damsels young, | |
| While from the school there pours a band | |
| That frolics in my native tongue. | |
| |
| My heart cries out in rapture wild, | |
| Rejoicing my old home to greet, | 30 |
| And all I lived with as a child | |
| Like echoes on my way I meet. | |
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