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(From Louisa)
Translated by J. Cochrane
O, HOW refreshing the air from the lake! how cool! And the landscape, | |
| How it does smile! Gay meadows and cornfields undulate round us; | |
| Up there dark green, nearer us light, and besprinkled with wild-flowers. | |
| What a commotion! The tall rye waves like a volume of green smoke. | |
| Yonder the village is seen, surrounded with orchards in blossom: | 5 |
| Nearer, the bright blue stream, and the spire with its glittering dial. | |
| There towers up the baronial castle, embosomed in chestnuts; | |
| Down in the meadow are cows, and the stork quite fearless among them. | |
| Round by the wood-clad hillock the lake lies shimmering brightly; | |
| Hay-stacks yonder in rows, there mowers; and here we ourselves are, | 10 |
| Listening the hum of the bees in the midst of the blossoming buckwheat. | |
| Come, let us all look round and enjoy this beautiful landscape. * * * * * | |
| Ended the father, and rose; when the others immediately followed; | |
| And all wandered about, by their long summer shadows attended, | |
| Over the gravelly bourne, to the stream from the lake forth flowing, | 15 |
| Far as the fragrant height where the pendulous birches to heaven | |
| Whispered, and fir-trees rose with their year’s growth’s golden tiara. | |
| Stealthily bunches of low green junipers crept o’er the hillocks, | |
| Fabulous graves of the giants; and shone with its prickles the holly. | |
| Waving aloft in the clouds, trees fit for some admiral rustled; | 20 |
| All to the eastward bent, from the storm in the forty-and-seven. | |
| Over the landscape, far towards Eutin they gazed upon orchards, | |
| Herd-pied meadows and woods, and on villages topped with their steeples; | |
| Where, in the distance, the prebend the prebendal lands could distinguish! | |
| Long they conversed there, singing the tender effusions of Stolberg, | 25 |
| Buerger, and Hagedorn too, and of Claudius, Gleim, and Jacobi: | |
| Sang, “O beautiful, wondrous is God’s creation,” with Hölty, | |
| Who could smile upon death; and lamented thy early removal, Sweetest of bards! * * * * * | |
| All now feasted, reclining at ease, sitting close by each other, | |
| Under the wide-spreading beech, with the soft thick moss underneath them. | 30 |
| Lower the sun now sunk, on the pendulous foliage pouring | |
| Glittering rays; oft forcing the sitters to shift their position. | |
| Scarcely a reed even stirred, and the lake was as smooth as a mirror: | |
| Ceaseless the grasshoppers chirped, and the gay birds warbled in concert: | |
| Bitterns far in the distance, and lapwings; nearer the cuckoo, | 35 |
| Blackbirds, thrushes, and finches, and bright yellow hammers: and yonder, | |
| Down in the cornfields, landrails craiked; embowered in elm-trees | |
| Wood-pigeons cooed, whose note with the blue-winged jay’s intermingled. | |
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