 | Vigil and vision |  |
GÖTTER IM WALDE.
(A PICTURE BY MORITZ SCHWIND).
I cannot heal me of the haunting care,The backward yearning for a bygone day,
When things yet lived which live no longer may,
When the young world was, in a younger air,
On other wise than this our old world, fair.
Belike, 'tis idle; yet, in this our gray
Of modern lightlessness, mine eyes away
I cannot turn from the delights that were.
What boots the exile that 'twere wise to tell
Far from his fatherland content to dwell
Or him, that still in pine must live and die
In this our darkling dulness, he were well
Forget the Gods with whom, in dreams gone by,
He lived and loved beneath a brighter sky?
| Vigil and vision | |