Song of the Departed

Full of harmonies is the flight of birds. The green woods

Have closed about the stiller huts at evening;

The crystal meadows of the stag.

Darkness soothes the plashing of the brook, the moist shadows

And the flowers of summer, ringing lovely in the wind.

Already the brow of the reflective man is dusk.

And a small lamp, kindness, is gleaming in his heart,

And the peace of the meal; for bread and wine are blessed

By the hands of God, and from nocturnal eyes the brother

Gazes silently at you, that he may rest from thorny wanderings.

Oh, the dwelling in the soul-charged blue of night.

Lovingly the silence in the chamber clasps the shadows of the

elders,

The crimson torments, the laments of a great generation,

Which is passed on devoutly in a solitary grandchild.

For out of black minutes of madness ever more radiant,

The patient one wakes on the petrified threshold,

And is ardently clasped by cool blue and the gleaming decline of

the autumn,

The silent house and the legends of the forest,

Measure and law and the moonlit paths of the departed.