_To My Wife_
_INVOCATION_
_Listen, my lute, I would turn from your militant measures.
Well have you answered the touch of intransigent fingers;
Wildly your strings have vibrated--but have you forgotten
How to make love-songs?_
_Lute, you are hot to the hand; you are tense and exultant.
Cease crying out--let me rest from the din and the battle.
Life is not only a summoning shout and a struggle,
A blow and a silence._
_Is there not vigorous peace after vigorous onslaught?
Beauty's a challenge as fierce and as stirring as conflict...
Look--how she runs through the tremulous twilight to meet me--
Do you remember?_
_See--it is night and she turns to my arms of a sudden;
Soft as a mother and wild with the fires of April--
Bashful and bold, with her passionate hair all about her;
Lovely and lavish._
_Lute, it was she who awoke and impelled us to singing--
Ah, those first lyrics, impulsive and feeble and earnest--
She who aroused us and soothed us--our passion, our pillow--
Dare you forget her!_
_Only remember 'tis she keeps me rested and restless;
Only remember my heart, like a fate in strong breezes.
Leaps at the thought of her voice and her slow, searching kisses,
Stabbing and healing._
"FEUERZAUBER"
I never knew the earth had so much gold--
The fields run over with it, and this hill
Hoary and old,
Is young with buoyant blooms that flame and thrill.
Such golden fires, such yellows--lo, how good
This spendthrift world, and what a lavish God--
This fringe of wood,
Blazing with buttercup and goldenrod.
You too, beloved, are changed. Again I see
Your face grow mystical, as on that night
You turned to me,
And all the trembling world--and you--were white.
Aye, you are touched; your singing lips grow dumb;
The fields absorb you, color you entire...
And you become
A goddess standing in a world of fire!