Classic Poem

1.

From place to place, you know not why,
You haste with hurrying feet.
A gentle word the breezes sigh;
You turn in wonder sweet.

The dear one that you left behind
Has called you soft and low:
" In thee alone my joy I find;
Come back, I love thee so! "

But further, further, driven and tost,
You needs must haste and flee;
What you so dearly loved and lost,
You nevermore shall see.

2.

" Oh, the dear, delightful singer!
And his songs, how sweet their burden!
Were he only here beside us,
Many a kiss would be his guerdon! "

But while dear, delightful ladies
Thus are thinking, I, the loved.
In a foreign land am pining,
Quite a hundred miles removed.

In the North it helps one little
That there's sunshine in the South;
Nor can hungry hearts grow fat on
Kisses promised to the mouth.

3.

I dreamed of a child with braided hair:
I thought we sat together
'Neath the lindens green, when the nights were fair
And blue in the summer weather.

O, fond were we, and we kissed for love,
And we talked of love and pain,
Till the yellow stars sighed soft above,
For envy of us twain.

From dreams I wake, I gaze around,
I am alone, 'tis night.
The shining stars, they make no sound,
Nor heed me on their height.

4.

I have not known thee of thy cheer
So sad for long, so sorrow-bowed;
Adown thy cheek there steals a tear,
And frequent are thy sighs and loud.

Say, are thy thoughts in yearning turned
Where, far in mist, thy home doth stand?
Confess that thou hast often yearned
For thy beloved Fatherland.

Dost think of her who in the past
With pretty petulance beguiled?
How grieved wert thou, till, at the last,
With laughter you were reconciled.

Dost think upon thy comrades true,
Who in the hour of rapture fell
Upon the neck — when stormy grew
Thy heart with thoughts too deep to tell?

Upon thy mother dost thou think?
Thy sister? Dear to both wert thou,
Thy courage high begins to sink,
Thy reckless mood to melt, I trow.

Dost think upon the trees that grew —
The birds — within that garden fair,
When love's young dream was sweet and new:
The hope of love, and love's despair?

The hour is late, and wan doth shine
The pallid night with melting snow.
And I, alas! must dress me fine,
And forth into the world must go.

5.

O I had once a beauteous Fatherland.
High used to seem
The oak — so high! — the violets nodded kind.
It was a dream.

In German I was kissed, in German told
(You scarce would deem
How sweetly rang the words): " I love thee well! "
It was a dream.