Heinrich Heine

Translated by A. S. Kline

 

Buch Der Lieder: Die Heimkehr: ‘Still ist die Nacht’

The night is so still, the streets are at rest,

This is the house that my love graced,

This is the town she’s long since left,

But the house is here in the selfsame place.

 

A man’s there too, who stands and stares,

And wrings his hands, in violent pain:

When I see his look it makes me scared –

The moonlight shows my face again.

 

You doppel-gänger! You pallid creature!

Why do you act that torment through,

Love, torturing me on this very corner,

For so many nights, those years I knew.

 

 

Buch Der Lieder: Die Heimkehr: ‘Der Tod, das ist’

Our death is in the cool of night,

Our life is in the pool of day.

The darkness glows, I’m drowning,

Day’s tired me with light.

 

Over my head in leaves grown deep,

Sings the young nightingale.

It only sings of love there,

I hear it in my sleep.

 

 

Aus Der Matratzengruft: ‘Morphine’

 

There’s a mirror likeness between the two

Bright, youthfully-shaped figures, though

One’s paler than the other and more austere,

I might even say more perfect, more distinguished,

Than the one who’d take me confidingly in his arms –

How soft then, loving, his smile, how blessed his glance!

Then it might well have been, that his wreath

Of white poppies touched my forehead, at times,

Drove the pain from my mind with its strange scent.

But all that’s transient. I can only, now, be well,

When the other one, so serious and pale,

The older brother, lowers his dark torch. –

Sleep is good: and Death is better, yet

Surely never to have been born is best.