And you envy not a transient
Human being's transient doings.
Only smile;--his feast at Christmas
You adorn with your young scions.
In your sturdy trunks lives also
Conscious life-sustaining power.
Resin through your veins is coursing;
And your dreamy thoughts are surging
Slow and heavy, upward, downward.
Oft I saw the clear and gummy
Tears which from your bark were oozing,
When a woodman's wanton axe-stroke
Rudely felled some loved companion.
Oft I heard your topmost summits
Spirit-like together whisper.
Then there breathed throughout my soul a
Sweet mysterious solemn dreaming.
Don't find fault then, if my song now
Soars within the forest shades.

'Twas in March: still played the Winter
Masquerade; the branches, laden
With fantastical ice-crystals,
To the ground were lowly drooping;
Here and there, out of Earth's bosom
Tender plants their heads were thrusting--
Wood-anemones and cowslips.
As the patriarch, old Noah,
At the time of the great Deluge,
Sent the dove to reconnoitre:
So with winter's ice sore burdened,
With impatience sends the Earth forth
These first flowers with a question,
Asking, whether the oppressor
Has not come to his last gasp yet.
Blustering from the Feldberg's summit
Now old Master Storm is rushing,
And rejoices, through the dark dense
Forest he again is blowing;
Says: "I greet you, ancient comrades;
Why I come, you know the reason--
They believe, poor mortal children,
When they see me tearing, snatching
Roughly some old hat away,
I am only there to frighten.
That would be a pretty business,
Breaking chimneys, smashing windows,
Scattering through the air some thatchings,
Tearing some old woman's clothing
Till she signs the cross in praying!
But you fir-trees know me better,
Me, the fair Spring's thorough cleaner,
Who what's mouldy sweeps afar off--
Who what's rotten blows to pieces--
Who the earth's domain well cleanses,
That his radiant Lord and Master
Worthily may make his entrance.
And you, noble forest comrades,
Who so oft, with bronze-like foreheads,
Bravely have withstood my rudeness,
Ye whose trunks I have to thank for