English translations of Drei Balladen, opus 4

 Midnight drew nearer already;
 In mute rest lay Babylon.

 Only above, in the king's castle,
 lights are flickering and the king's retinue makes noise.

 And above, in the king's hall,
 Belshazzar holds his royal banquet.

 The knights sat in shimmering rows,
 emptying goblets of sparkling wine.

 The goblets clinked, the knights cheered;
 and so they made noise for that headstrong king.

 The king's cheeks glowed;
 through wine his courage grew bolder.

 And blindly, his courage pulled him forward,
 and he maligned God with blasphemous words.

 And he boasted impertinently and blasphemed wildly
 while the crowd of knights bellowed their approval.

 The king called with a haughty glance;
 the servant hurried off and soon came back.

 He brought back on his head many golden treasures
 that had been plundered from Jehovah's Temple.

 And the king grasped with his criminal hand
 a sacred goblet and filled it to the brim.

 And he drained it hastily to the bottom,
 and then called loudly with foaming mouth:

 "Jehovah! I proclaim to you my eternal scorn,
 for I am the king of Babylon!"

 But hardly had those terrible words died away,
 when the king grew secretly fearful in his heart.

 The ringing laughter fell silent at once;
 the hall grew deathly still.

 And behold! behold! on the white wall
 there appeared something like a human hand;

 and it wrote and wrote on the white wall
 letters of fire; it wrote and disappeared.

 The king sat staring there,
 with knocking knees, pale as death.

 The crowd of knights sat cold and filled with horror,
 and sat entirely still, without a sound.

 Magicians came, but no one could understand
 and find the meaning of the flaming script on the wall.

 But Belshazzar, that very night,
 was murdered by his knights.