Soon between us rise to sight
Valleys cool, with bushes light,
Streams and meadows; next appear

Mills and wheels, the surest token
That a level spot is near,

Plains far-stretching and unbroken. 
And so onwards, onwards roam,
To my garden and my home!

But how comes it then to pass? 
All this gives no joy, alas!—­
I was ravish’d by her sight,
By her eyes so fair and bright,
By her footstep soft and light. 
How her peerless charms I praised,
When from head to foot I gazed! 
I am here, she’s far away,—­
I am gone, with her to stay.

If on rugged hills she wander,

If she haste the vale along,
Pinions seem to flutter yonder,

And the air is fill’d with song;
With the glow of youth still playing,

Joyous vigour in each limb,
One in silence is delaying,

She alone ’tis blesses him.

Love, thou art too fair, I ween! 
Fairer I have never seen! 
From the heart full easily
Blooming flowers are cull’d by thee. 
If I think:  “Oh, were it so,”
Bone and marrow seen to glow! 
If rewarded by her love,
Can I greater rapture prove?

And still fairer is the bride,
When in me she will confide,
When she speaks and lets me know
All her tale of joy and woe. 
All her lifetime’s history
Now is fully known to me. 
Who in child or woman e’er
Soul and body found so fair?

1815.
-----
Next year’s spring.

The bed of flowers

Loosens amain,
The beauteous snowdrops

Droop o’er the plain. 
The crocus opens

Its glowing bud,
Like emeralds others,

Others, like blood. 
With saucy gesture

Primroses flare,
And roguish violets,

Hidden with care;
And whatsoever

There stirs and strives,
The Spring’s contented,

If works and thrives.

’Mongst all the blossoms

That fairest are,
My sweetheart’s sweetness

Is sweetest far;
Upon me ever

Her glances light,
My song they waken,

My words make bright,
An ever open

And blooming mind,
In sport, unsullied,

In earnest, kind. 
Though roses and lilies

By Summer are brought,
Against my sweetheart

Prevails he nought.

1816.
-----
At midnight hour.

[Goethe relates that a remarkable situation he was in one bright moonlight night led to the composition of this sweet song, which was “the dearer to him because he could not say whence it came and whither it would.”]

At midnight hour I went, not willingly,

A little, little boy, yon churchyard past,
To Father Vicar’s house; the stars on high

On all around their beauteous radiance cast,