Once when I was shedding bitter tears,
when, dissolved in pain, my hope was melting away,
and I stood alone by the barren hillock
which in its narrow dark bosom hid the vanished form of my Life  --
lonely as never yet was lonely man,
driven by anguish unspeakable  --
powerless, and no longer aught but a conscious misery;  --
as there I looked about me for help,
unable to go on or to turn back,
and clung to the fleeting, extinguished life
with an endless longing:  --  then, out of the blue distances,
from the hills of my ancient bliss, came a shiver of twilight,  --
and at once snapt the bond of birth,
the fetter of the Light.  Away fled the glory of the world,
and with it my mourning  --  the sadness flowed together
into a new, unfathomable world.  -- Thou, soul of the Night,
heavenly Slumber, didst come upon me;  --
the region gently upheaved itself,
and over it hovered my unbound, new-born spirit.
The hillock became a cloud of dust,
and through the cloud I saw the glorified face of my beloved.
In her eyes eternity reposed.
I laid hold of her hands,
and the tears became a sparkling chain that could not be broken.
Into the distance swept by, like a tempest, thousands of years.
On her neck I welcomed the new life with ecstatic tears.  --
Never was such another dream;  --
then first and ever since I hold fast an eternal,
unchangeable faith in the heaven of the Night,
and its sun, the Beloved.