Translated by SEAN THOMPSON, who writes and translates from German and French in Ireland

To the Fates

Oh grant me just one summer, destiny,

And then one autumn for my ripened song

So that my heart can die more willingly,

Being sated with sweet sounds, and slumber long.

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The soul which does not claim its sacred right

In life will not rest peacefully below

But if I once attain that glory bright,

The poem, heart, the holiest thing you know,

---

Then welcome, silence of the world of shade!

I am content, though at that nether shore

The bronze notes of my lyre can lend no aid.

I lived once like the gods, I need no more.

The Neckar

My heart awoke to life within your valleys,

Your waves played round me, none of all those hills

Which know you, wanderer, are strange to me.

The breath of heaven often, on their summits,

Lightened the pains of bondage, while below

The blue-tinged flood of silver gleamed, like life

Poured from joy’s beaker. All the mountain streams

Rushed down to you, and with them went my heart,

You bore us to the hushed and noble Rhine,

Down to his cities and his isles of pleasure.

It seems the world has beauty in it yet.

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Yearning for earthly charms, my eye escapes

To golden Pactolus, to Smyrna’s shore,

And to the woods of Ilion. I long to land

At Sunium, to ask for the silent path

To your high pillars, O Olympia,

Before the stormwind and the passing ages

Have buried you in wrecked Athenian temples

With all their sacred statues, for it is long

That you have stood alone, O pride of a world

That is no more. And O, Ionian islands!

There, where the salt air cools the panting shore

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And whispers through the laurel, when the sun

Keeps warm the grapevines and a golden autumn

Transmutes the sighs of the people into song,

When pomegranate ripens, when the orange

Gleams through green night, when mastic resin drips

And kettledrum and cymbal-clash set up

The labyrinthine dance. To you, O islands!

Someday, perhaps, my guardian God will bring me,

But even then my Neckar will be dear,

With all its pastured shores, its gentle meadows.

Curriculum Vitae

I strove for height. To thwart my strife

Love weighed me down, then roughly pain

Dragged me. I trace the arc of life

And end up at the start again.