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

Sad Spring

By Friedrich Rückert (1788–1866)

From the series of sonnets entitled ‘In Memory of Agnes’: Translation of Charles Timothy Brooks

“SWEET SPRING is here,” I heard men say and sing;

Then went I forth to seek where he might be:

I found the buds on every bush and tree,

But nowhere could I find my darling, Spring.

Birds sang, the bees they hummed, but everything

They sang or hummed was sad as sad could be;

Rills gushed, but all their waves were tears to me;

Suns laughed,—no joy to me their looks could bring.

Nor of my darling could I find a trace,

Till with my pilgrim staff I took my way

To a well-known but long-neglected place,

And there I found him, Spring: near where she lay,

He sate, a beauteous boy, with tearful face,

Like one who weeps above a mother’s clay.