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,

At midnight hour.

And when, in journeying o'er the path of life,

My love I follow'd, as she onward moved, With stars and northern lights o'er head in strife,

Going and coming, perfect bliss I proved

At midnight hour.

Until at length the full moon, l.u.s.tre-fraught,

Burst thro' the gloom wherein she was enshrined; And then the willing, active, rapid thought

Around the past, as round the future twined,

At midnight hour.

1818.

----- TO THE RISING FULL MOON.

Dornburg, 25th August, 1828.

WILT thou suddenly enshroud thee,

Who this moment wert so nigh?

Heavy rising ma.s.ses cloud thee,

Thou art hidden from mine eye.

Yet my sadness thou well knowest,

Gleaming sweetly as a star!

That I'm loved, 'tis thou that showest,

Though my loved one may be far.

Upward mount then! clearer, milder,

Robed in splendour far more bright!

Though my heart with grief throbs wilder,

Fraught with rapture is the night!

1828.

----- THE BRIDEGROOM.*