Songs, 9

With rose and cypress and tinsel gay,
I fain would adorn in a charming way
This book, as though a coffin it were,
And in it my olden songs inter.

O, could I but bury love also there!
On love’s grave grows rest’s floweret fair;
’Tis there ’tis pluck’d in its sweetest bloom,--
For me ’twill not blossom till in my tomb.

Here now are the songs that formerly rose,
As wild as the lava from Etna that flows,
From out the depths of my feelings true,
And glittering sparks around them threw!

Like corpses now lie they, all silent and dumb,
And cold and pallid as mist they’ve become;
But the olden glow their revival will bring
When the spirit of love waves o’er them its wing.

In my heart a presentiment loudly cries:
The spirit of love will over them rise:
This book will hereafter come to thy hand,
My sweetest love, in a distant land.

Then the spell on my song at an end will be,
The pallid letters will gaze on thee,
Imploringly gaze on thy beauteous eyes,
And whisper with sadness and loving sighs.