And follow their track. 
Round wall and round mountain

Together we fly;
She tarries below there,

I after her spy.

Then onward she wanders,

My flight I wing soon
To the wood fill’d with bushes,

A bird of sweet tune. 
She tarries and hearkens,

And smiling, thinks she: 
“How sweetly he’s singing!

He’s singing to me!”

The heights are illum’d

By the fast setting sun;
The pensive fair maiden

Looks thoughtfully on;
She roams by the streamlet,

O’er meadows she goes,
And darker and darker

The pathway fast grows.

I rise on a sudden,

A glimmering star;
“What glitters above me,

So near and so far?”

And when thou with wonder

Hast gazed on the light,
I fall down before thee,

Entranced by thy sight!

1803.
-----
To Mignon.

Over vale and torrent far
Rolls along the sun’s bright car. 
Ah! he wakens in his course

Mine, as thy deep-seated smart

In the heart. 
Ev’ry morning with new force.

Scarce avails night aught to me;
E’en the visions that I see
Come but in a mournful guise;

And I feel this silent smart

In my heart
With creative pow’r arise.

During many a beauteous year
I have seen ships ’neath me steer,
As they seek the shelt’ring bay;

But, alas, each lasting smart

In my heart
Floats not with the stream away.

I must wear a gala dress,
Long stored up within my press,
For to-day to feasts is given;

None know with what bitter smart

Is my heart
Fearfully and madly riven.

Secretly I weep each tear,
Yet can cheerful e’en appear,
With a face of healthy red;

For if deadly were this silent smart

In my heart,
Ah, I then had long been dead!
-----
The mountain castle.

There stands on yonder high mountain

A castle built of yore,
Where once lurked horse and horseman

In rear of gate and of door.

Now door and gate are in ashes,

And all around is so still;
And over the fallen ruins

I clamber just as I will.

Below once lay a cellar,

With costly wines well stor’d;
No more the glad maid with her pitcher

Descends there to draw from the hoard.

No longer the goblet she places

Before the guests at the feast;
The flask at the meal so hallow’d

No longer she fills for the priest.

No more for the eager squire

The draught in the passage is pour’d;
No more for the flying present

Receives she the flying reward.

For all the roof and the rafters,