“How clearly, how sweetly, how madly she laughs
“Her white teeth all the while showing!
“Whenever I think of that laugh, in streams
“The tears from my eyes begin flowing.
“I love her indeed with a boundless love
“That scorches me up to a cinder;
“’Tis like a wild waterfall, whose fierce flood
“No barrier ever can hinder.
“It nimbly leaps from rock to rock
“With noisy foaming and boiling;
“Its neck it may break a thousand times,
“Yet on, still on, it keeps toiling.
“If all the expanse of the heavens were mine,
“To Venus the whole I’d surrender;
“I’d give her the sun, I’d give her the moon,
“I’d give her the stars in their splendour.
“I love her indeed with a boundless love,
“Whose flame within me rages;
“O say can this be the fire of hell,
“The glow that will last through all ages?
“O holy Father, Pope Urban, to whom
“To bind and to loose not too much is,
“O save me from the pangs of hell,
“And out of the Evil One’s clutches!—”
His hands the Pope raised sadly on high,
And sigh’d till these words he had spoken:
“Tannhauser, most unhappy knight,
“The charm can never be broken.
“The Devil whom they Venus call
“Is mighty for hurting and harming;
“I’m powerless quite to rescue thee
“From out of his talons so charming.
“And so thy soul must expiate now
Thy fleshly lusts infernal;
Yes, thou art rejected, yes, thou art condemn’d
To suffer hell’s torments eternal.”