Greetings to you, you green expanses
Of glorious forests, bright with spring,
Where the dull heart may awaken
Happily from all troubles.
Greetings to you, you rocky crags
That stretch up into the clouds
And upon your giant nape
Carry beeches, slender as columns.
 
  Mossy gorges, rocky chasms
Are covered by the red foliage
That the autumn breezes stormily
Flung down into the dust;
Like a carpet brown and golden
They are lying layer upon layer,
Those, which with its rare blooming spikes
Hardly a green plant interrupts.
 
  That which unfurled so full of hope
Once in May in its youthful vigour,
Quickly grown old, is in autumn
Swept away to the dead;
But inexhaustibly surges forth again
New growth upon new growth,
And the strong branches entwine
To form a high, vaulted ceiling.
 
  Child of man, and you wish to complain
When in the stormy turmoil of the world
Your hopes are dashed [and]
Fall to the ground like the leaves?
Arise! From your undaunted marrow
Create new hopes a thousandfold,
And thus watch, thus grow strong
Like the storm-tried forest.
 
  Greetings to you, you green expanses
Of glorious forests, bright with spring,
Through the treetops I hear it moving
In a hundred voices, loudly and gently;
Sprouting forth, budding, bestirring itself mightily,
It rushes onward like a flight of spirits;
Spring, I perceive, full of the power of life,
Your renewed breath.