With black-brown eyes of wonder
Thou dost my going scan:
“Who art thou, and what ails thee,
Thou sorrowful foreign man?”
I am a German poet,
Among the Germans famed—
There, when they count their greatest,
My name is also named.
And, little one, what ails me
Ails Germans not a few;
Count they the sorest sorrows,
They name my sorrows too.
[EIN FICHTENBAUM
STEHT EINSAM]
From the German of Heinrich Heine
There stands a lonely Pine-tree
On a bare northern height.
’Mid ice and snow he slumbers,
Wrapped in his mantle white.
He dreams about a Palm-tree
In far-off Eastern lands,
That droops, alone and silent,
Above her burning sands.