Ludwig Fulda (1862–1939)

I HASTEN by a city lightning-fast

Here in the rattling train: I see

Streets, houses, people shooting past,

Wagons, lanterns, signs in flight,

Overlapping in my sight;

Blotted, dim they seem to me.

Here I lived once long ago,

Lived for years

In youth’s impassioned sacred glow,

In love and hate, in hopes and fears.

Round the corner there—

To the left, by the square—

Lives my one-time worshipped fate;

Behind the walls there, flitting past,

I could almost hold it fast—

No: too late—too late!

The last few houses—the empty plain:

The long-lost world is fled again,

With joys and sorrows great

Of storm-blessed youthful strife.—

I feel as if this moment I

Had like a stranger hurried by

My own forgotten life!