Love

Seraphina, 8

by Heinrich Heine 1797–1856

Translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring (1908) · From New Poems: Seraphina

Love

Gray night broodeth o’er the ocean,
And the tiny stars are sparkling;
Long protracted voices oft-times
Sound from out the billows darkling.

There the aged north wind sporteth
With the glassy waves of ocean,
Which like organ pipes are skipping
With a never-ceasing motion.

Partly heathenish, partly churchlike,
Strangely doth this music move us,
As it rises boldly upwards,
Gladdening e’en the stars above us.

And the stars, still larger growing,
With a radiant joy are gleaming,
And at length around the heavens
Roam, with sunlike lustre beaming

To far-reaching strains of music
They revolve in madden’d legions
Sunny nightingales are circling
In those fair and blissful regions.

With a mighty roar and crashing,
Sea and heaven alike are singing,
And I feel a giant-rapture
Wildly through my bosom ringing

MLA

Heine, Heinrich. “Seraphina, 8.” Translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring. Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/heine/175/.

Chicago

Heine, Heinrich. “Seraphina, 8.” Translated by Edgar Alfred Bowring. Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/heine/175/.

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