C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

Martin Opitz (1597–1639)

Translation of Bayard Taylor

AH, sweetheart, let us hurry!

We still have time.

Delaying thus, we bury

Our mutual prime.

Beauty’s bright gift shall perish

As leaves grow sere;

All that we have and cherish

Shall disappear.

The cheek of roses fadeth,

Gray grows the head;

And fire the eyes evadeth,

And passion’s dead.

The mouth, love’s honeyed winner,

Is formless, cold;

The hand, like snow, gets thinner,

And thou art old!

So let us taste the pleasure

That youth endears,

Ere we are called to measure

The flying years.

Give, as thou lov’st and livest,

Thy love to me,

Even though, in what thou givest,

My loss should be!