The Poetical Writings of Fitz-Greene Halleck/Translation from the German

TRANSLATION FROM THE GERMAN.

There’s one who long will think of thee,
Though thou art cold in death’s last sleep;
There’s one will love thy memory
Till his own grave the night-dews steep.
And if no outward tears he weep,
And none his silent sorrows know,
Still doth his heart its vigils keep
Beside the spot where thou art low.

Sad was thy mortal pilgrimage,
And bitter tears thine eyes have shed;
But now the storm hath spent its rage;
The turf is green above thy head,
And, loveliest of the buried dead,
Sweet may thy dreamless slumbers be;
Thy grave the summer’s bridal bed,
Her evening winds thy minstrelsy.

As withered on thy cheek the rose,
I cursed the hour when love betrayed thee;
’Twas mine, in death, thine eyes to close,
And watch till on the bier they laid thee.

No gloomy cypress-boughs shall shade thee,
No marble thy sad story tell;
The cruel world shall ne’er upbraid thee
With having loved—and loved too well.