Slumbering Sister
Come, break your flutes to pieces on your knee.
Who would play music to the dead, forsooth!
We do not lean a hot and feverish head
Upon a breast that death makes hard and chill.
No, in life's turmoil we'd forget the dead
For whom of old our hearts with love could thrill.
We seek our living at the stranger's gate.
Men ask: "What has your home-land done of late?
Is not her fame the goal of your ambition,
Her strife, her toil, in small things as in great?"
Our silence tells our sharp contrition.
Who would play music to the dead, forsooth!
We do not lean a hot and feverish head
Upon a breast that death makes hard and chill.
No, in life's turmoil we'd forget the dead
For whom of old our hearts with love could thrill.
We seek our living at the stranger's gate.
Men ask: "What has your home-land done of late?
Is not her fame the goal of your ambition,
Her strife, her toil, in small things as in great?"
Our silence tells our sharp contrition.
How empty year succeeds on empty year,
How comfort palls, wherever we may roam,
If our life passes far away from home!
But of our flutes we build for her a bier
And lift her up from where, supine, she lay,
Whispering softly meanwhile at her ear
That in the world already dawn shows clear.
Her borrowed garments then we cast away.
Remorsefully we tramp out with our tread
The incense, bearing her with songs instead
Out of the stuffy alcove deep
Unto the threshold where the dawn wind blows,
And the first light tinges her cheek with rose.
She is not dead; she does but sleep.
How comfort palls, wherever we may roam,
If our life passes far away from home!
But of our flutes we build for her a bier
And lift her up from where, supine, she lay,
Whispering softly meanwhile at her ear
That in the world already dawn shows clear.
Her borrowed garments then we cast away.
Remorsefully we tramp out with our tread
The incense, bearing her with songs instead
Out of the stuffy alcove deep
Unto the threshold where the dawn wind blows,
And the first light tinges her cheek with rose.
She is not dead; she does but sleep.
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