Deine schöne Augen
by Peter Rosegger (1843-1918)

Oh nichts giebt es auf Erden,
Was mich so sehr entzückt,
Als Deine schönen Augen,
Seit sie mich angeblickt.
Sie sind meine Himmelssterne,
Die ich so selig schau’;
Sie sind mein Sonnenschein;
Sie sind mein Morgenthau;
Sie sind meine Frühlingsblumen;
Sie sind mein Alpensee,
Wo mein Schifflein schaukelt
Und wo ich untergeh.

A Day Dream
by Emily Brontë (1818-1848)

On a sunny brae alone I lay
⁠   One summer afternoon;
It was the marriage-time of May,
⁠   With her young lover, June.

From her mother’s heart seemed loath to part
⁠   That queen of bridal charms,
But her father smiled on the fairest child
⁠   He ever held in his arms.

The trees did wave their plumy crests,
⁠   The glad birds carolled clear;
And I, of all the wedding guests,
⁠   Was only sullen there!

There was not one but wished to shun
⁠   My aspect void of cheer;
The very gray rocks, looking on,
⁠   Asked, ‛What do you here?’

And I could utter no reply;
⁠   In sooth, I did not know
Why I had brought a clouded eye
⁠   To greet the general glow.

So, resting on a heathy bank,
⁠   I took my heart to me;
And we together sadly sank
⁠   Into a reverie.

We thought, ‛When winter comes again,
⁠   Where will these bright things be?
All vanished, like a vision vain,
⁠   An unreal mockery!

‛The birds that now so blithely sing,
⁠   Through deserts, frozen dry,
Poor spectres of the perished spring,
⁠   In famished troops will fly.

‛And why should we be glad at all?
⁠   The leaf is hardly green,
Before a token of its fall
⁠   Is on the surface seen!’

Now, whether it were really so,
⁠   I never could be sure;
But as in fit of peevish woe,
⁠   I stretched me on the moor,

A thousand thousand gleaming fires
⁠   Seemed kindling in the air;
A thousand thousand silvery lyres
⁠   Resounded far and near:

Methought, the very breath I breathed
⁠   Was full of sparks divine,
And all my heather-couch was wreathed
⁠   By that celestial shine!

And, while the wide earth echoing rung
⁠   To that strange minstrelsy,
The little glittering spirits sung,
⁠   Or seemed to sing, to me:

‛O mortal! mortal! let them die;
⁠   Let time and tears destroy,
That we may overflow the sky
⁠   With universal joy!

‛Let grief distract the sufferer’s breast,
⁠   And night obscure his way;
They hasten him to endless rest,
⁠   And everlasting day.

‛To thee the world is like a tomb,
⁠   A desert’s naked shore;
To us, in unimagined bloom,
⁠   It brightens more and more!

‛And, could we lift the veil, and give
⁠   One brief glimpse to thine eye,
Thou wouldst rejoice for those that live,
⁠   Because they live to die.’

The music ceased; the noonday dream,
⁠   Like dream of night, withdrew;
But Fancy, still, will sometimes deem
⁠   Her fond creation true.

The Mystic
by Don Marquis (1878-1889)

Have I not know the sky and sea
Put on a look as hushed and stilled
As if some ancient prophecy
Drew on to be fulfilled?

And would it be so strange a thing,
Among the rainy hills of Spring
A veritable god to see
In luminous reality?
To see him pass, as bursts of sun
Pass over the valleys and are gone?

Have I not seen the candid street
Grow secret in the blaze of noon,
Swaying before the Paraclete
Who weaves its being through his rune?

And would it be too strange to say
I see a dead man come this way?
Like mist the houses shrink and swell,
Like blood the highways throb and beat,
The sapless stones beneath my feet
Turn foliate with miracle;
And from the crowd my dead men come,
Fragrant with youth… and living mirth
Moves lips and eyes that once were dumb
And blinded in the charnel earth.

And I have dwelt with Presences
Behind the veils of Time and Place
And hearkened to the silences
that guard the courts of grace,
And I have dared the Distances
Where the red planets race—
And I have seen that Near and Far
And god and Man and Avatar
And Life and Death but one thing are—
And I have seen this wingless world
Curst with impermanence and whirled
Like dust across the Summer swirled,
And I have seen this world a star
All wonderful in Space!

Pied Beauty
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

Glory be to God for dappled things—
⁠      For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
⁠            For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim:
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
⁠      Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
⁠            And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
⁠      Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
⁠            With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
⁠                              Praise him.

Hohenlinden
by Thomas Campbell (1777-1844)

On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow,
And dark as winter was the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

But Linden saw another sight
When the drum beat, at dead of night,
Commanding fires of death to light
The darkness of her scenery.

By torch and trumpet fast arrayed
Each horseman drew his battle blade,
And furious every charger neighed,
To join the dreadful revelry.

Then shook the hills with thunder riven,
Then rushed the steed to battle driven,
And louder than the bolts of heaven
Far flashed the red artillery.

And redder yet those fires shall glow
On Linden’s hills of blood-stained snow,
And darker yet shall be the flow
Of Iser, rolling rapidly.

’Tis morn, but scarce yon lurid sun
Can pierce the war-clouds, rolling dun,
Where furious Frank and fiery Hun
Shout in their sulphurous canopy.

The combat deepens. On, ye brave,
Who rush to glory, or the grave!
Wave, Munich, all thy banners wave!
And charge with all thy chivalry!

Ah! few shall part where many meet!
The snow shall be their winding-sheet,
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier’s sepulchre.