Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 7.djvu/507

 Rh And when the trickling cliffs of slate

The color from the sunset borrow,

Methinks an eye all red with sorrow

Looks down on me disconsolate.

The arbor peak with jagged edge

Wears many a vine-shoot long and meagre

And from the moss beneath the hedge

Creep forth carnations, nowise eager.

There from the moist cliff overhead

The muddy drippings oft bedew them,

Then creep in lazy streamlets through them

To sink within a fennel-bed.

Along the roof o'ergrown with moss

Has many a tuft of thatch projected,

A spider-web is built across

The window-jamb, else unprotected;

The wing of a gleaming dragon-fly

Hangs in it like some petal tender,

The body armed in golden splendor

Lies headless on the sill near-by.

A butterfly sometimes may chance

In heedless play to flutter hither

And stop in momentary trance

Where the narcissus blossoms wither;

A dove that through the grove has flown

Above this dell no more will utter

Her coo, one can but hear her flutter

And see her shadow on the stone.

And in the fireplace where the snow

Each winter down the chimney dashes

A mass of bell-capped toad-stools grow

On viscid heaps of moldering ashes.