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Poems Selected from Heinrich Heine – by Kate Freiligrath Kroeker

It is the fairy forest old
With lime tree blossoms scented
The moon shine had with its mystic light
My soul and sense enchanted
 
On, on I roamed, and as I went
Sweet music o'er me rose there
It is the nightingale – she sings
Of love and lovers' woes there
 
She sings of love and lovers' woes
Hearts blessed and hearts forsaken
So sad  her mirth, so glad her sob
dreams long forgot waken
 
Still on I roamed, and as I went
I saw before me louring
On a great wide lawn a stately pile
With gables peaked and towering
 
Closed were its windows, everywhere
A hush, a gloom past telling
It seemed as though silent death within
These empty halls were dwelling
 
A sphinx lay there before the door
Half brutish and half human
 A lioness in trunk and claws
In head and breasts a woman
 
A lovely woman!  The pale cheek
Spoke of desires that wasted
The hush'd lips curved into a smile
That woo'ed them to be tasted
 
The nightingale so sweetly sang
I yielded to their wooing
And as I kissed that winning face
I sealed my own undoing
 
The marble image thrilled with life
The stone began to quiver
She drank my kisses burning flame
With fierce convulsive shiver
 
She almost drank my breath away
And, to her passion bending
She clasped me close, with  lion claw
My hapless body rending
 
Delicious torture, rapturous pang
The pain the bliss unbounded
Her lips their kiss  was heaven to me
Her claws oh how they wounded
 
 The nightingale sang: O beauteous sphinx
O love, love! Say why this is
That with the anguish of death itself
Thou minglest all thy blisses?
 
'O beauteous Sphinx, oh answer me
That riddle strange unloosing!
For many many thousand years
Have I been on it musing'