Читать книгу The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 06 - Коллектив авторов, Ю. Д. Земенков, Koostaja: Ajakiri New Scientist - Страница 17

  It is the fairy forest old,

    With lime-tree blossoms scented!

  The moonshine with its mystic light

    My soul and sense enchanted.

  On, on I roamed, and, as I went,

    Sweet music o'er me rose there;

  It is the nightingale—she sings

    Of love and lovers' woes there.

  She sings of love and lovers' woes,

    Hearts blest, and hearts forsaken:

  So sad is her mirth, so glad her sob,

    Dreams long forgot awaken.

  Still on I roamed, and, as I went,

    I saw before me lowering

  On a great wide lawn a stately pile,

    With gables peaked and towering.

  Closed were its windows, everywhere

    A hush, a gloom, past telling;

  It seemed as though silent Death within

    These empty halls were dwelling.

  A Sphinx lay there before the door,

    Half-brutish and half-human,

  A lioness in trunk and claws,

    In head and breasts a woman.

  A lovely woman! The pale cheek

    Spoke of desires that wasted;

  The hushed lips curved into a smile,

    That wooed them to be tasted.

  The nightingale so sweetly sang,

    I yielded to their wooing;

  And as I kissed that winning face,

    I sealed my own undoing.

  The marble image thrilled with life,

    The stone began to quiver;

  She drank my kisses' burning flame

    With fierce convulsive shiver.

  She almost drank my breath away;

    And, to her passion bending,

  She clasped me close, with her lion claws

    My hapless body rending.

  Delicious torture, rapturous pang!

    The pain, the bliss, unbounded!

  Her lips, their kiss was heaven to me,

    Her claws, oh, how they wounded.

  The nightingale sang: "O beauteous Sphinx!

    O love, love! say, why this is,

  That with the anguish of death itself

    Thou minglest all thy blisses?

  "Oh beauteous Sphinx, oh, answer me,

    That riddle strange unloosing!

  For many, many thousand years

    Have I on it been musing!"