The Maiden's Lament

Friedrich Schiller 1759 (Marbach am Neckar) – 1805 (Weimar)



The clouds fast gather,
            The forest-oaks roar--
          A maiden is sitting
            Beside the green shore,--
    The billows are breaking with might, with might,
    And she sighs aloud in the darkling night,
      Her eyelid heavy with weeping.

          "My heart's dead within me,
            The world is a void;
          To the wish it gives nothing,
            Each hope is destroyed.
    I have tasted the fulness of bliss below
    I have lived, I have loved,--Thy child, oh take now,
      Thou Holy One, into Thy keeping!"

          "In vain is thy sorrow,
            In vain thy tears fall,
          For the dead from their slumbers
            They ne'er can recall;
    Yet if aught can pour comfort and balm in thy heart,
    Now that love its sweet pleasures no more can impart,
      Speak thy wish, and thou granted shalt find it!"

          "Though in vain is my sorrow,
            Though in vain my tears fall,--
          Though the dead from their slumbers
            They ne'er can recall,
    Yet no balm is so sweet to the desolate heart,
    When love its soft pleasures no more can impart,
      As the torments that love leaves behind it!"

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 27, 2023

56 sec read
156

Quick analysis:

Scheme xabaccb xdbdexb efgFhhi efgFhhi
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,171
Words 187
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 7, 7, 7, 7

Friedrich Schiller

Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet philosopher historian and playwright During the last seventeen years of his life Schiller struck up a productive if complicated friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang Goethe with whom he frequently discussed issues concerning aesthetics and encouraged Goethe to finish works he left merely as sketches this relationship and these discussions led to a period now referred to as Weimar Classicism They also worked together on Die Xenien The Xenies a collection of short but harshly satirical poems in which both Schiller and Goethe verbally attacked those persons they perceived to be enemies of their aesthetic agenda. more…

All Friedrich Schiller poems | Friedrich Schiller Books

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