Shall I conceal myself somewhere and cry inaudibly, with bowed head — and dry again my tired eyes that never, never have any rest —
And let, as heretofore, my glance wander off into gray distances and cast it hither-thither, pursuing fortune in morbid anxiety —
Or shall I cast myself in wild despair into the gutter with flaming eyes and, tigress-like, growl in pain, with nostrils distended in heavy breath —
Or shall I hide myself somewhere and cry inaudibly with bowed head? — — —

Charmingly the summer greets my beloved friends, who go to meet it in everyday clothes and with grey faces. And charmingly the summer greets my dear friends, who look at it from the distance through the grey windows of their dwellings and cannot go to meet it. Whatever summer awakens in the trees, it also awakens in them. Whatever summer stirs in the soil, summer stirs in them, too; but — it remains in them smiling in quiet shyness, for they are too tired to blossom forth verdant and tall like trees, for they are too tired to reveal themselves as boundless as the fields .

Life is a bulky harp with long, long strings. God, with my frail fingers I wish to seize the strings .
Yet I wish to rouse no one, nor to console nor to scare. Thus I choose the softest melody to lull myself to sleep .

Dear seven brothers, we write you the truth, but the ocean between us makes the truth appear paler .
We are well-off over here: we have fuel to burn, we have salt for our bread, and as yet it is the old songs we are singing day and night; and fish, and birds, and rainbows we have too. But our Beauty meanders along all evil roads and talks as befits but a woman of the streets. She lives on the main avenue and makes us feel ashamed, us seven brothers .
We greet you and send you herewith three wild nuts weighing seven measures, a flask of oil, and two dried fishes .

How pleasant 'tis at ease to wander through
The flower-enamelled meads,
Strolling when winds are soft and skies are blue
Whither one's fancy leads.
How sweet, beneath the shadow of the vine
Which tender tendrils wreathes,
With a deep-bosomed maid to sit supine,
Who wholly of Cypris breathes.

In the beginning they were pure white, the round snowballs on the bushes — as are white and round the breasts of the maiden who has not as yet known of sin .
Later in August they turned rosy — (the sun passionately kissed them with his light,) as the chaste, tender, girlish face is rosy, flushed in her first love .
And now they stand altogether dark brown, yet still they dream on of white and rose ... They calmly sway in the still light, their brown heads drooping heavily on the sere grass .

It was a night, a cool summer night. Replete with blueness and moon-shine and love; she fell passionately upon the earth, like a passionate wealthy mother upon her friendless orphan, emraced her softly with velvety skies, kissed her with grass scents, caressed her with breezes, wept for joy with meteors, and somewhere a cricket sawed its serenade, and somewhere a frog croaked continually the " prayer before sleep, " and somewhere in the grass I lay forsaken — somewhere in the grass... The body clung to the ground; and the soul strayed and sought for a goal in heaven's deep.

O, you in whose sturdy singer's breast two abysses have united: the depth of the musing sky and the depth of the earth, rocked in stillness; in whose heart the sun shone and the moon; where the stars beamed clearly, entire worlds without number; in whose heart May was verdant, and where the thunder's peal mingled with the twittering of the nightingale; in whose marvelously powerful song one feels the omnipotence and the splendor of nature —
Immortal prophet! I give you praise. I fall in the dust before your dust and sing .

God's will! Let Him lead me wherever He will and how He will! Against Him I will not stand, and like a child I'll follow silently .
On hill tops, in deep ravines, with open eyes — yet blind; in the lair of wild beasts — the Father leads, the child will follow .

I'm a water current. Born by a mountain, and lost among high, waste rocks in a deep valley .
With a sad melody willows sway over me, and a grey melancholy has overtaken me .
To the great, broad ocean God Himself will take me. Throughout the deep waters He will distribute me .
Great God, what shall I have to relate to the tower-high waves, to the free storm-winds?