Camoens: "Beholding Her"

When I behold you, Lady! When my eyes
Dwell on the deep enjoyment of your sight,
I give my spirit to that one delight,
And earth appears to me a Paradise.

And when I hear you speak,
And see you smile,
Full satisfied, absorb'd, my center'd mind,
Deems all the world's vain hopes
And joys the wild,
As empty as the unsubstantial Wind.

Lady! I feel your charms,
Yet dare not raise,
To that high theme the unequal Song of praise,
A power for that to language
Was not given.

Nor marvel I, when I those beauties view, Lady!
That He, Whose power created you,
Could form the Stars,
And yonder glorious Heaven.

J.W. Ludwig Gleim: "Cynthia Bathing"

From her fair limbs
The last thin veil she drew,
And naked stood in all her charms confess'd,
The wanton gales
Her ringlets backward blew,

To sport themselves more freely on her breast:
From each warm
Beauty of the uncovered maid,
Before scarce guessed at, or but seen in part,
From all, for all, was to my eyes displayed,
Delicious poison trickled to my heart:

Since thus I gazed
(was mine to gaze the blame?)
Nor bless my soul hath tasted, nor repose;
The subtle venom glides through all my frame,
And in my brain a fiery deluge glows:

Thou, who my pangs wouldst shun,
With wiser care the spot,
Where Cynthia bathes at noon, beware.

J.C. von Zedlitz: "A Core of Light"

Excerpt, "Translations From The German Poets." Edward Stanhope Pearson. 1879.

A core of light with thousand
Rays is streaming
Its God-enkindled origin to warrant.
Tis Genius is the Sun which
Life awakens
And ripens all, a fertilizing torrent.

What glass soever make her
Image picture
May she in song her dauntless
Flight be winging,
All heart together bringing,
The Highest still she seeketh,
That she knoweth.

Long since the common world
To wreck had tumbled,
Without her, and long since to
Dust had crumbled,
The halls of that fair fane where
Heaven's fire gloweth.

She is the spring whence
Life Eternal trilleth,
From life she comes,
She only Life instilleth.

Goethe: "To A Golden Heart, Worn Round His Neck"

Excerpt, "The Sonnets of Europe: A Volume of Translations." Selected and Arranged with Notes by Samuel Waddington. 1885.

Remembrance of Joys long passed away,
Relic, from which as yet I cannot part,
O, hast thou power to lengthen
love’s short day?
Stronger thy chain than that which
bound the heart?

Lili, I fly – yet still thy fetters press me
In distant valley, or far lonely wood.
Still with a struggling sigh of
pain confess thee
The mistress of my soul in
every mood.

The bird may burst the silken chain
that bound him,
Flying to the green home, which
fits him best;
But, ah! He bears the prisoner’s
badge around him,
Still by the piece about his neck distressed.
He ne’er can breathe his free
wild notes again;
They’re stifled by the pressure of his chain.

Nicolaus Lenau: “Invocation of Night”

Excerpt, "Translations From The German Poets." Edward Stanhope Pearson. 1879

Darkbrow’d eye, O rest upon me,
Fill me with thy fullest might,
Earnest, mild, with dreamful plumage,
Sweet, unfathomable Night!

In thy magic darkness, wrap me
Draw this world from out my view,
That athwart my inmost being
Thou may’st hover through and through!