Poet's Corner: Then and Now

Then and Now

"How I wish I could go back there,
Where such happiness was mine,
Where I lived and where I dreamt through
My youth's year the most divine!"

While away I felt the longing
To return to the homeland,
The old bliss, I kept on hoping,
Would still be there close at hand.

Finally good fate and fortune
Brought me to that vale again;
But I found upon returning
That my hope had been in vain.

The old brook was there to greet me
Bouncing sounds from rocks around;
But my good friend’s voice was missing,
From the rhapsody of sound.

Nikolaus Lenau (1802–1850)
Nikolaus Tullius, trans.