Heinrich Heine's The Lotus Flower

The Lotus Flower

The lotus flower is frightened

By the sun's majestic light;

With downcast eyes and dreaming

She longs for the quiet of night.

 

The moon, he is her lover,

He wakes her with silver rays;

To him she unveils her friendly

Devoted flower face.

 

She blooms and sparkles, gazing

Silently up to his glow;

In fragrance she weeps and trembles

From rapture of love and woe.

 

-Heinrich Heine (tr. Ernst Feise)

 

Heine was a German poet, born in 1797 in Düsseldorf, when the revolutionary French forces occupied the town. His parents were Jewish. In 1831, he moved as a political exile to Paris, where he lived the rest of his life. In 1848, he suffered a paralytic stroke and was confined to bed (his 'mattress-grave' he called it) from then until his death in 1856, but still writing all the time.

 

The German:

 

Die Lotosblume

 

Die Lotosblume ängstigt

Sich vor der Sonne Pracht,

Und mit gesenktem Haupte

Erwartet sie träumend die Nacht.

 

Der Mond, der ist ihr Buhle,

Er weckt sie mit seinem Licht,

Und ihm entschleiert sie freundlich

Ihr frommes Blumengesicht.

 

Sie blüht und glüht und leuchtet

Und starret stumm in die Höh;

Sie duftet und weinet und zittert

Vor Liebe und Liebesweh.

 

-Heinrich Heine