Poetry Archives

Over the water the shadows are creeping,
Lost are the lights on Bellagio’s shore,
Goddess and Faun in the garden are sleeping,
Only the fountain sings on as before.

Low as its murmur, when daintily falling,
Sweet as its plaintive, mellifluous song,
Voices of absent ones seem to be calling:—
“Come to us! Come! thou hast waited too long.”

Vainly I call it a childish delusion,
Vainly attempt to regard it with mirth,
Still do I hear in my spirit’s seclusion
Voices I loved in the land of my birth.

Ever recurrent, like tides of the ocean,
Sad are these cadences, reaching my ear,
Waking within me a mingled emotion,—
Partly of ecstasy, partly of fear;

For of the friends who once gathered to greet me
Many, alas! will await me no more;
Few are the comrades remaining to meet me,
Cold are the arms that embraced me before!

Over Life’s river the shadows are creeping,
Dim and unknown is the opposite shore,
But in the fatherland some are still keeping
Lights in the window and watch at the door.