C.D. Warner, et al., comp. The Library of the World’s Best Literature.
An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

My Heart with Hidden Tears is Swelling

Translation of Ernest Beard

MY heart with hidden tears is swelling,

I muse upon the days long gone;

The world was then a cozy dwelling,

And people’s lives flowed smoothly on.

Now all’s at sixes and at sevens,

Our life’s a whirl, a strife for bread;

There is no God in all the heavens,

And down below the Devil’s dead.

And all things look so God-forsaken,

So topsy-turvy, cold, and bare;

And if our wee bit love were taken,

There’d be no living anywhere.