A region desolate and wild, Black, chafing water: and afloat, And lonely as a truant child In a waste wood, a single boat: No mast, no sails are set thereon; It moves, but never moveth on:...
Where I am, thou ask'st, and where I wended When my fleeting shadow pass'd from thee? Am I not concluded now, and ended? Have not life and love been granted me? ...
In the cedar shadow sleeping, Where cool grass and fragrant glooms Oft at noon have lur'd me, creeping From your darken'd palace rooms: I, who in your train at morning...
Youth rambles on life's arid mount, And strikes the rock, and finds the vein, And brings the water from the fount, The fount which shall not flow again.
Still glides the stream, slow drops the boat Under the rustling poplars' shade; Silent the swans beside us float None speaks, none heeds ah, turn thy head.
Go, for they call you, shepherd, from the hill; Go, shepherd, and untie the wattled cotes! No longer leave thy wistful flock unfed, Nor let thy bawling fellows rack their throats,...
And you, ye stars, Who slowly begin to marshal, As of old, in the fields of heaven, Your distant, melancholy lines! Have you, too, survived yourselves? Are you, too, what I fear to become?...
Faster, faster, O Circe, Goddess, Let the wild, thronging train The bright procession Of eddying forms, Sweep through my soul! Thou standest, smiling Down on me! thy right arm,...
So rest, for ever rest, O princely Pair! In your high church, 'mid the still mountain air, Where horn, and hound, and vassals never come. Only the blessed Saints are smiling dumb,...