Poems to Louise H.

And still you, my distant vision,
in your original, girlish innocence
before my spirit’s eyes stood mute,
reproachful and sadly angry now,

when I had finished my hallowed task.
Like lightning you flashed in the barren wasteland
to my sick soul... Like a pure stream
you flowed suddenly through the mire of my heart,

sacred harmony pressed into my hearing,
shaken in his soul was the follower of Baal.
And all to which I had forcibly been deaf,

ran along the rusted strings of my heart
and was carried off — “whither my fallen spirit
will not reach” — to the dwelling of the ideal.