Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 457

How blest, in whom the fond desire

From error's sea to rise, hope still renews!

What a man knows not, that he doth require,

And what he knoweth, that he cannot use.

But let not moody thoughts their shadow throw

O'er the calm beauty of this hour serene!

In the rich sunset see how brightly glow

Yon cottage homes, girt round with verdant green!

Slow sinks the orb, the day is now no more;

Yonder he hastens to diffuse new life.

Oh for a pinion from the earth to soar,

And after, ever after him to strive!

Then should I see the world below,

Bathed in the deathless evening-beams,

The vales reposing, every height a-glow,

The silver brooklets meeting golden streams.

The savage mountain, with its cavern'd side,

Bars not my godlike progress. Lo, the ocean,

Its warm bays heaving with a tranquil motion,

To my rapt vision opes its ample tide!

But now at length the god appears to sink

A new-born impulse wings my flight,

Onward I press, his quenchless light to drink,

The day before me, and behind the night,

The pathless waves beneath, and over me the skies.

Fair dream, it vanish'd with the parting day!

Alas! that when on spirit-wing we rise,

No wing material lifts our mortal clay.

But 'tis our inborn impulse, deep and strong,

Upwards and onwards still to urge our flight,

When far above us pours its thrilling song

The sky-lark, lost in azure light;

When on extended wing amain

O'er pine-crown'd height the eagle soars;

And over moor and lake, the crane

Still striveth toward its native shores.