Oh, childhood! What a wondrous melody
  Lies in this word!
[Whatever]1 figures push themselves in,
  It speaks to the heart and never grows old.
With painful yearning it shall tremble through us
  When fate drives us out into the world,
For that which never repeats itself in life,
  That is our home and our father's house!

The moon gazes silverly through the darkness of the branches,
  The clouds scud quickly along the heights of heaven;
It seems to me that in the whispering of the leaves I hear
  The wafting of ghostly voices of times past.
What is soughing there between the reeds and willows,
  And above sways the dark green of the alder?
It is the brooklet that in former times
  Seemed to me to be the greatest river!

I saw the golden stars reflected deeply,
  And thought: that must be where heaven is too!
And I saw angels -- ah, with golden wings!
  And I often wished to be in the surging water.
The clouds scudded away with the speed of the wind,
  The reeds soughed with a spooky sound,
And in the surging of yonder wave I discerned
  The night song of the lovely water sprite!

Far behind me, carried by the flight of time,
  Lies the golden, enchanted land of my childhood,
And differently than I did in those beautiful past days,
  I now walk up and down along the alder-shore.
From the clear waves there still shines
  The blue vault of heaven bestrewn with stars;
But the angels have long since flown away
  And alas! -- my great river has become a little brook.