The Phoenix
By Heinrich Heine
Es kommt ein Vogel geflogen aus Westen
A bird comes flying out of the West.
It flies eastward
Toward its orient garden-home,
Where strange spices blossom and breathe,
And palm-trees rustle and springs are cooling.
And the glad bird sings as he flies:
” She loves him! She loves him!
She carries his picture in her small heart,
And carries it sweetly and shyly hidden,
And scarcely knows it, herself!
But in her dreams he stands before her,
She pleads and cries and kisses his hands,
And calls him by name,
And, calling, she wakes and lies half-frightened,
And rubs her eyes with a trembling wonder —
She loves him! She loves him! “
…
I leaned on the mast on the upper deck;
And stood and listened to the bird’s song
The white-curling billows leaped up and sprang
Like dusky green horses with silvery manes.
With shimmering sails, the Heligolanders,
Those daring nomads of the sea,
Went by, like lines of soaring swans.
Over me, in the eternal blue,
White clouds were floating
And the eternal sun,
The Rose of the heavens, the fire-blossoming,
Laughed at its splendor mirrored in the sea; —
And sky and sea and my own wild heart
Rang with the echo:
” She loves him! She loves him! “