Dark, dark on the moor,
Night upon the heath,
Only the trickling pipe
Is awake next to the mill,
And on the spikes of the wheel
Swelling drops creep.

Paddock crouches in the swamp,
Hedgehog cowers in the grass,
In the rotting stump
The toad twitches in sleep,
And on the sandy slope
The snake curls up more tightly.

What gleams there beyond the broom
And forms disks of light?
Now it sends a spray of sparks
That go out as they drift down;
Now everthing's dark again --
I hear the steel clicking,
A crackling, a twinkling --
And the flames flash up.

And shepherd boys squat
In a circle all round, they stretch
Their hands, bits of peat
I see licked by the blaze;
A strong lad bursts
From the tangle of the brush
And briskly drags along
A jumbled mass of juniper.

He lets it fall into the fire --
Hey, how the boys whoop
And the sparks snap their fingers
Flying about like rockets!
How their stocking caps
Gaily flutter at their ears,
And how the needles splatter,
And how the branches crackle!

The flame sinks down, they squat
Once more in the circle round about,
And chunks again go flying,
And again it smoulders quietly;
Glowing red lights glide
On locks of hair and face,
And the little imps of the heath
Resemble real demons.

That one, the one without shoes,
Why does he stretch like a rod
His arm into the darkness,
What's that murmuring in the circle?
They peer out like young vultures
From their heaps of broom:
Hah, another shepherd's fire,
Right at the middle of the dike!

They see it as it rises
And spreads its shimmer,
The mazy dance of sparks
Floats above the juniper;
The boys whisper quietly,
They clear their throats,
And the old melody of the heath
Trembles through the reeds.

"Helo, helo-ay!
Helo-ay, lo-ay!
Come to our heath,
Where I graze my lambs,
Come, o come to our marshy hollow,
We've plenty of flowers here, --
Helo, helo-ay!"

The boys fall silent, listen toward the pine forest,
And quietly it drifts in through the broom:

  Antistrophe

"Helo, helo-ay!
I sit upon the bank,
My lambs are all asleep,
Come, o come to our field,
There the grass grows as high as the broom.
Helo, helo-ay!
Helo-ay, lo-ay!"