SHE behind yon mountain lives,
Who my love's sweet guerdon gives.
Tell me, mount, how this can be!
Very glass thou seem'st to me,
And I seem to be close by,
For I see her drawing nigh;
Now, because I'm absent, sad,
Now, because she sees me, glad!
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?
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
