PAROLES D'UN AMANT

Par M"' Ackermann.

Au courant de l'amour lorsque je m'abandonne. Dans le torrent divin quand je plonge enivré. Et presse éperdûment sur mon sein qui frissonne Un êti*e idolâtré.

« For man has no port, time has no shore and no bower,

It speeds, we are its toy. »

Ah ! jealous Time, can those brief moments of delight, In which in long draughts love pours out the cup of joy. Fly far away from us with the same rapid flight

As days with griefs alloy.

What! can we not at least in their course mark their trace? Are they then wholly gone and lost for ever more? Time, which bestowed them and which now does them efface,

Will it not them restore?

Eternity, the void, times past, abysses dark, What do you with the days, which you fast swallow up? Speak ! will you ne'er restore to us those joys we mark

W'hich you take from our cup?

Ah Lake, mute rocks, — caves, grottoes, forest most obscure, You that Time spares, or which it can to us restore. Keep of that eve, oh keep, fair Nature, kind and pure.

The mem'ry evermore.

May it dwell in thy repose, and even in thy storms. Dear Lake, and in the views of thy dear banks and caves, In those dark pines and those wild rocks of varied forms,

Which overhang thy waves.

May it stay in the zephyr which stirs us and may pass. In thy banks weird sounds, echoed by thy rocks and bays, In the star with silver'd face which makes white thy mass,

With its mild beauteous rays.

May the soft breeze which moans, the reed which gently sighs. May the rich perfumes of thy balmy air and mead, May all that one hears, sees, or breathes, while swift Time flies,

All say — " they loved indeed! "