| |
| WHERE would impatient feet be turned to-day | |
| If in the longed-for land beyond the sea? | |
| To storied marbles, or to ruins gray, | |
| Whose fame, since childhood, has been haunting me? | |
| Nay, to a mound that waiteth for a stone | 5 |
| Would I be guided, there to weep alone | |
| Over the relic that a spirit flown | |
| Hath left at Badenweiler. | |
| |
| He can no longer take the birthday gift, | |
| But were I near my offering he should wear: | 10 |
| I ’d drop him flowers until the odor-drift | |
| Should seem to melt through earth and reach him there. | |
| Though faint the strongest comfort I could get, | |
| Would that these yearning eyes his grave had met; | |
| ’T would be my emerald, in sorrow set, | 15 |
| That grave at Badenweiler. | |
| |
| This the first birthday he has felt no kiss! | |
| To-day, still heart, how sadly do I keep! | |
| Thy life from mine so sorely do I miss, | |
| Into thy rest sometimes I long to creep. | 20 |
| O, make me sure as though thy lips had told | |
| That we draw closer for death’s bitter cold,— | |
| That it hath drawn us nearer than of old, | |
| That grave at Badenweiler. | |
| |
