The hours are only a slothful race! Lazily they move each day, And with yawning go their way;-- Hasten on, ye slothful race!
Wild-raging eagerness thrills me indeed; Never in love have the hours delighted; So, in a cruel bond strangely united, Slily deride they the lovers’ wild speed.
By nought but sorrow attended, I wander’d under the trees; That olden vision descended, And stole to my heart by degrees.
Who taught you the word ye are singing, Ye birds in the branches on high? O hush! when my heart hears it ringing, It makes it more mournfully sigh.
“A fair young maiden ’twas taught it, “Who came here, and sang like a bird; “And so we birds easily caught it, “That pretty, golden word.”
No more shall this story deceive me, Ye birds, so wondrously sly: Of my sorrow ye fain would bereave me, On your friendship I cannot rely.
Sweet love, lay thy hand on my heart, and tell If thou hearest the knocks in that narrow cell? There dwells there a carpenter, cunning is he, And slily he’s hewing a coffin for me.
He hammers and knocks by day and by night, My slumber already has banish’d outright; Oh, Master Carpenter, prythee make haste, That I some slumber at length may taste.
Beauteous cradle of my sorrow, Beauteous grave of all my peace, Beauteous town, we part to-morrow, Fare thee well, our ties must cease!
Fare thee well, thou threshold holy, Where my loved one sets her feet! Fare thee well, thou spot so holy, Where we chanced at first to meet!
Would that we had been for ever Strangers, queen of hearts so fair! Then it would have happen’d never That I’m driven to despair.
Ne’er to stir thy bosom thought I, For thy love I never pray’d; Silently to live but sought I Where thy breath its balm convey’d.
Yet thou spurn’st me in my sadness, Bitter words thy mouth doth speak, In my senses riots madness, And my heart is faint and weak
And my limbs, in wanderings dreary, Sadly drag I, full of gloom, Till I lay my head all weary In a chilly distant tomb.
Patience, surly pilot, shortly To the port I’ll follow you; From two maidens I’m departing, From my love and Europe too.
Blood-spring, from mine eyes ’gin running, Blood-spring, from my body flow, So that I then, with my hot blood, May write down my tale of woe.