FIREFLIES IN THE CORN
She speaks. Look at the little darlings in the corn!
The rye is taller than you, who think yourself
So high and mighty: look how the heads are
borne
Dark and proud on the sky, like a number of
knights
Passing with spears and pennants and manly scorn.
Knights indeed!—much knight I know will ride
With his head held high-serene against the sky!
Limping and following rather at my side
Moaning for me to love him!—Oh darling rye
How I adore you for your simple pride!
And the dear, dear fireflies wafting in between
And over the swaying corn-stalks, just above
All the dark-feathered helmets, like little green
Stars come low and wandering here for love
Of these dark knights, shedding their delicate
sheen!
I thank you I do, you happy creatures, you dears
Riding the air, and carrying all the time
Your little lanterns behind you! Ah, it cheers
My soul to see you settling and trying to
climb
The corn-stalks, tipping with fire the spears.
All over the dim corn's motion, against the blue
Dark sky of night, a wandering glitter, a
swarm
Of questing brilliant souls going out with their
true
Proud knights to battle! Sweet, how I warm
My poor, my perished soul with the sight of
you!
A DOE AT EVENING
As I went through the marshes
a doe sprang out of the corn
and flashed up the hill-side
leaving her fawn.
On the sky-line
she moved round to watch,
she pricked a fine black blotch
on the sky.
I looked at her
and felt her watching;
I became a strange being.
Still, I had my right to be there with her,
Her nimble shadow trotting
along the sky-line, she
put back her fine, level-balanced head.
And I knew her.
Ah yes, being male, is not my head hard-balanced,
antlered?
Are not my haunches light?
Has she not fled on the same wind with me?
Does not my fear cover her fear?
IRSCHENHAUSEN
SONG OF A MAN WHO IS
NOT LOVED
THE space of the world is immense, before me and
around me;
If I turn quickly, I am terrified, feeling space
surround me;
Like a man in a boat on very clear, deep water,
space frightens and confounds me.
I see myself isolated in the universe, and wonder
What effect I can have. My hands wave under
The heavens like specks of dust that are floating
asunder.
I hold myself up, and feel a big wind blowing
Me like a gadfly into the dusk, without my know-
ing
Whither or why or even how I am going.
So much there is outside me, so infinitely
Small am I, what matter if minutely
I beat my way, to be lost immediately?
How shall I flatter myself that I can do
Anything in such immensity? I am too
Little to count in the wind that drifts me through.
GLASHÜTTE
SINNERS
THE big mountains sit still in the afternoon light
Shadows in their lap;
The bees roll round in the wild-thyme with de-
light.
We sitting here among the cranberries
So still in the gap
Of rock, distilling our memories
Are sinners! Strange! The bee that blunders
Against me goes off with a laugh.
A squirrel cocks his head on the fence, and
wonders
What about sin?—For, it seems
The mountains have
No shadow of us on their snowy forehead of
dreams
As they ought to have. They rise above us
Dreaming
For ever. One even might think that they love us.
Little red cranberries cheek to cheek,
Two great dragon-flies wrestling;
You, with your forehead nestling
Against me, and bright peak shining to peak—
There's a love-song for you!—Ah, if only
There were no teeming
Swarms of mankind in the world, and we were
less lonely!
MAYRHOFEN