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Home  »  library  »  poem  »  To Laura

C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

To Laura

By Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805)

(Rapture)

Translation of Lord Edward Bulwer-Lytton

LAURA, above this world methinks I fly,

And feel the glow of some May-lighted sky,

When thy looks beam on mine!

And my soul drinks a more ethereal air,

When mine own shape I see reflected there

In those blue eyes of thine!

A lyre sound from the Paradise afar,

A harp note trembling from some gracious star,

Seems the wild ear to fill;

And my Muse feels the Golden Shepherd hours,

When from thy lips the silver music pours

Slow, as against its will.

I see the young Loves flutter on the wing—

Move the charmed trees, as when the Thracian’s string

Wild life to forests gave;

Swifter the globe’s swift circle seems to fly,

When in the whirling dance thou glidest by,

Light as a happy wave.

Thy looks, when there Love’s smiles their gladness wreathe,

Could life itself to lips of marble breathe,

Lend rocks a pulse divine;

Reading thine eyes, my veriest life but seems

Made up and fashioned from my wildest dreams,—

Laura, sweet Laura, mine!