Thou worthy head of the cellar of Bremen! See where sit on the roofs of the houses The angels, all well-drunken and singing; The glowing sun high up in the heavens Is nought but the red and drunken nose Which the World-Spirit sticks out, And round the World-Spirit’s red nose Whirleth the whole of the drunken world.
As on the plain shoot up the wheatstalks So do the thoughts in the spirit of man Grow up and waver; But the gentle thoughts of the poet Are as the red and blue-colour’d flowers Merrily blooming between them.
Red and blue-colour’d flowers! The surly reaper rejects you as useless, Wooden flails all-scornfully thresh you, Even the needy traveller, Whom your sight rejoices and quickens, Shaketh his head, And calleth you pretty weeds; But the rustic virgin, The twiner of garlands, Doth honour and pluck you, And with you decketh her beauteous locks, And thus adorn’d, makes haste to the dance, Where pipes and fiddles sweetly are sounding, Or to the silent beech-tree, Where the voice of the loved one still sweeter doth sound Than pipes or than fiddles.
In olden legends, golden castles stood Where harps were sounding, beauteous maidens danced, And spruce attendants flash’d, and jessamine And rose and myrtle shed their fragrance round-- And yet one single word of disenchantment Made all this splendour in a moment vanish, And nought remain’d behind but olden ruins And croaking birds of night and drear morass. So have I, too, with but one single word, All Nature’s blooming glories disenchanted. There lies she now, as lifeless, cold, and pale As some bedizen’d regal corpse might be, Whose cheekbones have been colour’d red by art, And in whose hand a sceptre hath been placed. His lips however wither’d look and yellow, For they forgot to dye them red as well; And mice are springing o’er his regal nose, And ridicule the pond’rous golden sceptre.
Hemm’d close in by gloomy mountains Proudly o’er each other rising, Lull’d to sleep by wildly-dashing Cataracts, like some fair vision,
In the valley lies the charming Cauterets. Its snow-white houses All have balconies; upon them Stand fair ladies, laughing loudly.
Laughing loudly, downward look they On the chequer’d noisy market, Where there dance a male and female Bear, to sound of bagpipe-music.