Greatness, and greatness yet again, mine angel!
Greatness for which we groan in misery!
A few days still,—let it torment the heart,—
A few days only, fewer already are.
’Tis done! ’Tis vain to grieve for vanished time.
Aye! let us weep, but let our proud foes tremble!
For Konrad wept, but ’twas to murder them!
But wherefore cam’st thou here—wherefore, my love?
Unto God’s service did I vow myself.
Was it not better in His holy walls,
Afar from me to live and die than here,
In the land of lying and of murderous war,
In this tower-grave by long and painful tortures
To expire, and open solitary eyes,
And through the unbroken fetters of this grate
Implore for help, and I be forced to hear,
To look upon the torture of long death,
Standing afar, and curse my very soul,
That harbours relics yet of tenderness?