The Past

Die Verbannten Kinder Evas

Waking or asleep, thou of death must deem
Things more true and deep than we mortals dream
We look before and after and pine for what's not
Our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught

Will thou now forget the happy hours
Which we buried in love's, in love's sweet bowers
Heaping over their corpses so cold
Blossoms and leaves instead of the mold?

Forget the dead and the past? Oh yet,
There are ghosts that may take revenge for it,
Memories that make the cold heart a tomb
Regrets which glide through the spirit's gloom,