Let me lie in grass and flowers
And gaze towards the blue sky:
[To see] how golden clouds fly through it,
How a falcon circles peacefully in it.
 
The blue stillness up there is not disturbed
By any steamer and any sailing ship,
No footsteps of man, no uproar of horses,
Not the wild whistle of a steam carriage.
 
Let me look my fill at the clarity,
In this chaste, blessed expanse,
For soon the evil dream
Of flying could become reality.
 
Then the birds shall flee from the air
The way the salmon already flees the Rhine,
And where once larks soared while singing,
Britannia's sons now travel morosely mute.
 
If I look at the heavens, to determine
Why it is dark so suddenly,
I behold a train of commodities
That travels past the sun.
 
If in the sunshine I feel rain,
I boldly look for the rainbow;
If it was not rain, as I thought,
Then an oil barrel in the air has sprung a leak.
 
Let me gaze from the earthly tumult
Up toward heaven, before it is too late,
Before from the globe as from the heavens
Poetry departs, silently sorrowing.
 
Forgive this song of the poet's grievance,
That he dreams of such a horror in the heavens,
He, whom his time, his steam-mad time,
Shuts out from earth uncharitably.