To me is measured.
With the hot turmoil of love’s rapturous madness
Life’s sun ascends for me in cloudless gladness;
The Horae’s endless light, the radiant morn,
To me was born.
For boldly in thy glances I might sun me;
Thy image pours all ecstasies upon me;
Grandest and most divine of women, thee,
Thee I might see.
Enamored youth! The poem did not receive its final polish nor its last stanzas, and was left unprinted; apparently it did not seem to him good enough to print. It was just dashed off in an hour of intoxicating happiness. He saw life ascending as a cloudless sun, in the radiance of youth, in the light of the Horae—and how soon an enemy’s bullet was to destroy this life! Can it be calculated how much of the beautiful and valuable that stupid bullet shot away from posterity?