Harzreise im Winter

[excerpt used in Alto Rhapsody, op. 53, by Johannes Brahms; English translation]

But set apart, who is this man?

In the bushes his track is lost,

behind him the shrubs

close up,

the grass grows tall again,

the wilderness devours him.

Ah, who heals the pains

of him for whom the balsam became poison?

Who drank hatred of man

from the fullness of love?

First scorned, now a scorner,

he feeds in secret on

his own importance

in unsatisfying self-love.

If there be in your psaltery,

father of love, one sound

pleasing to his ear,

let it refresh his heart!

Open his clouded gaze

to the thousand springs

next to the one that thirsts

in the wilderness.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe