English translations of Vier Gesänge, opus 92

That which I dreamed and if it were true,
      that you had died:
      you would live eternally in me
   and would have secured a sweet felicity . . .

      Now you are still living,
   and there is a springtime about you,
   and all the blossoms are blooming for you . . 

   And yet every one of them tells you
      that you have died . . 
   and that for all eternity
   the felicity of your heart is now
      withered, ruined . . .

I am lonely 
and my soul thirsts
for a great, wondrous happiness
that I presage in distances, far distances.
[Someday]1 it shall come,
shall lay its hands upon my head,
[shall] stand before me shining with great eyes . . 
Shall I then be young enough to grasp that happiness,
have I . . become fainthearted and weary and old?
Shall it come . . too late . . ?
Loneliness creeps sluggishly about me,
and my soul thirsts
for happiness . . .

A sweet harp-strain
sings its way into the blossoming valley;
softly, [as softly as the ringing of flower bells]1
delicate little voices sound along with it.

Sunken into the flowers, a maiden
[rests]2, young and beautiful,
intoxicated with the scent of spring and with the sun
in the bright, joyful sound.

And they come striding up,
a springtime procession,
springtime standing in the middle
with a throne of blue silk.

And they stand silently and marvel,
tilting their little heads from side to side,
and they whisper and they murmur
about the lovely sleeping girl.

and springtime descends,
inclines its flower-scepter and
kisses her upon her rosy eyelids
and upon her lips pale with yearning,

so that now in this silence
she sees all the heavens opened
and in the fullness of these flowers
herself blissfully, silently fades away.

You are still sending your dreams into the distance,
as if in its wondrous breadth you see
the gold bird of happiness fluttering about your head . .

and in the meantime the sunshine that you gathered
along the way runs from your hands,
and heedlessly you let it glide upon the ground . . 

until you waken and see stretched out behind you the pathway,
so beautiful, as you never perceived it,
with gleams of sunshine between the flowering shrubs . . 

At the end [of the path] it seems as if a bird were flying
With uncertain, fluttering wing-beats,
[a bird] that grows ever smaller, quite small, and now fades into nothing . . 

Before you the pathway goes on, grey and dreary . . 

But, weeping, you cover your face with your hands,
and wearily you weep for your happiness . . .