I am close to you, [but] you never sense it;
I keep my vigil by the lattice below:
from your window beckons a glimmer
replete with promise into my night;
and now and then wafted toward me
on the favorable wings of the evening breeze,
I hear how a distant chiming
passes harmoniously through the silence.

Is it your fingers that strike the strings
so deftly, that glide
dreamily over the keys,
comely wanderers without a goal?
O how I envy your soul,
that it can travel and reside in tones,
and stream out in the sound of a skilled voice
that can induce both delight and sorrow.

They say that a singular, heavenly peace
lives in music, in song and sound,
and hearts that have departed the world,
and hearts that have been swallowed by grief,
shall find themselves and others again
when waves of sound lull them,
when the melodies of gentle songs
lay themselves comfortingly upon [the heart's] wounds.

Alas, that it is only in dead signs
I penned in solitude,
not in [musical] sounds that would equal yours,
that I can say to you: I love you!
Now in those distant voices
that you have awakened at the piano,
may my poem dissolve as a distant echo,
as a reminder -- and as a greeting from me.