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Title: The Cloister Cellar Master's
Author: Joseph Victor Scheffel [
More Titles by Scheffel]
SUMMER MORNING SONG.
Hu weh! mir ist des Tages bang!
Tret ich hinaus in den schweigenden Bergwald
Den kaum das erste Frühlicht erhellet,
Wehe! noch lagert die Hitze von Gestern
Ueber versengtetn Moos und Gesträuch.
Ah me! what a dull day it is!
If I go out in the wood on the mountain
When the tops shine in the earliest sunlight,
Ah! there still lingers the dry heat of yestern
On the singed mosses and withering shrubs,
And all around me come midges by thousands,
Stinging and bold,
As if the hot sun were sprinkling in sparkles.
Wide gaping crevices split the earth round us;
Grass dries to hay before they can mow it,
And in the air sweeps
Dust ....
Ah me! what a dull day it is!
If I seek by the trunk of the giant-grown beech-tree
A cool place to sit on the rough-hewn stone bench,
Where by the eight-cornered slab of the table
The brethren merrily rest in the forest,
Ah! there the stone rays a heat that is horrible,
Cannot endure me!
All because I, when just seated, so nimbly
Jumped in a hurry.
Grasshoppers sit, sound asleep, by the road-side
Quiet as can be.
Dull ....
Ah me! what a dull day it is!
These are the times, hey, when people and cattle
Are scorching red-hot like the irons in a smithy!
Pour on them drops or long floods of cold water,
All would be swallowed and nothing be quenched.
Ah!--hey!--the matin bell still is a-ringing,
And I'm seized with a powerful yearning already
To go to the cloister, and down to the cellar!
Whether I'll tarry there steadily drinking
Until the night comes,
Or a loud clattering thunder in heaven
Breaks up this wearisome terrible heat,
I don't know,
Only my thirst is
Dreadful ....
Ah me! what a dull day it is.
[The end]
Joseph Victor Scheffel's poem: Cloister Cellar Master's
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