| |
SEE! in the May afternoon, | |
| O’er the fresh short turf of the Hartz, | |
| A youth, with the foot of youth, | |
| Heine! thou climbest again. | |
| Up, through the tall dark firs | 5 |
| Warming their heads in the sun, | |
| Checkering the grass with their shade,— | |
| Up, by the stream with its huge | |
| Moss-hung boulders and thin | |
| Musical water half hid,— | 10 |
| Up, o’er the rock-strewn slope, | |
| With the sinking sun, and the air | |
| Chill, and the shadows now | |
| Long on the gray hillside,— | |
| To the stone-roofed hut at the top. | 15 |
| |
| Or, yet later, in watch | |
| On the roof of the Brocken tower | |
| Thou standest, gazing! to see | |
| The broad red sun, over field, | |
| Forest and city and spire | 20 |
| And mist-tracked stream of the wide, | |
| Wide German land, going down | |
| In a bank of vapors,—again | |
| Standest! at nightfall, alone. | |
| |
| Or, next morning, with limbs | 25 |
| Rested by slumber, and heart | |
| Freshened and light with the May, | |
| O’er the gracious spurs coming down | |
| Of the Lower Hartz, among oaks, | |
| And beechen coverts, and copse | 30 |
| Of hazels green in whose depth | |
| Ilse, the fairy transformed, | |
| In a thousand water-breaks light | |
| Pours her petulant youth, | |
| Climbing the rock which juts | 35 |
| O’er the valley, the dizzily perched | |
| Rock! to its Iron Cross | |
| Once more thou cling’st; to the Cross | |
| Clingest! with smiles, with a sigh. | |
| |
| Goethe, too, had been there. | 40 |
| In the long-past winter he came | |
| To the frozen Hartz, with his soul | |
| Passionate, eager, his youth | |
| All in ferment;—but he | |
| Destined to work and to live | 45 |
| Left it, and thou, alas! | |
| Only to laugh and to die. | |
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