Why is it then, that everything is dull and heavy
as it comes and goes,
and that, changeable, tormented and ever empty,
my poor heart is growing cold?

Hardly have I arrived 
than I must go;
hardly have they been kindled than
all joys again
must be extinguished 
and a dark cloud 
of sorrow descend.

From those lights in the darkness,
those eyes that suffuse
my heart with laughter and joy,
I am again pulled back into misery,
to my dreary life
pulled back again. 
What a fleeting moment
is my happiness!
What a long, long time
this dull, heavy sorrow of parting lasts!
How can I turn back
and be deprived of you?

O when I had never yet seen you,
I could live with longing,
for a wind of hope would fan my desires,
and the future was bright:
Now I must buy from my memories
that which I can hardly feel, so sparse it is now;
once again, through the desolate crowd,
through an unknown land,
I must wander lamenting,
as the golden thread of happiness,
the last one, is lost.
I still feel your hand,
as if in a dream; I still feel your kisses,
and you still follow me with a lovely gaze;
and the feeling that all is lost
remins behind with me.

O hope, O languor, o pain of love and longing, 
how I thirst for sweet tears!
O comfort me, vain delusion,
even though you are so empty and dead!
Must you abandon me so quickly?

O Present, how swift you are!
O Past, how small you are!
O Future, how can you be so unending?
Limitless like the arching heavens,
the stars climbing in eternal space;
so I feel each hour and day, as the moons come forth,
and throughout the dull silence of my existence,
about me lies an imperishable ocean of dark waves
and ah! no green bank will show itself!