From The Songbook (1827), “North sea: second cycle”

Summary

No. 9

Happy the man, who has reached harbor,

Leaving behind him sea and storms,

And now sitting warm and calm

In the good Ratskeller in Bremen.

How cozy and charming the world seems

Reflected in the large wine rummer.

And how the surging microcosm

Flows, like sunlight, into the thirsty heart!

I see everything in my glass,

The history of peoples, old and new,

Turks and Greeks, Hegel and Gans,

Lemon-tree forests, the changing of the guard,

Berlin and Schilda and Tunis and Hamburg,

But above all the image of my beloved

With angel's head against the gold Rhine wine.

Oh, how beautiful! How beautiful you are, my love!

You are like a rose!

Not like a rose of Shiraz,

The nightingale bride sung by Hafiz;

Not like the rose of Saron,

Red and holy, celebrated by the prophets; –

You are like the rose in the Bremen Ratskeller!

That is the rose of roses.

The older it is, the more sweetly it blooms,

And I found bliss in its heavenly scent,

It inspired me, it enchanted me,

And had not the Ratskeller-master

Held me by the hair

I would have fallen over.

That good man! We sat together

And drank like brothers,

We spoke of high and secret things

We sighed and fell into each other's arms,

And he made me a convert to the faith of love –

I drank to the health of my bitterest enemies,

And forgave all the bad poets,

As I hope one day to be forgiven –

I cried from devotion and finally

The gates of redemption opened to me,

Where the twelve apostles, the holy wine barrels,

Silently preached, but so understandably

For all peoples.

Those are men!

Nothing to look at from outside, in their wooden cloaks, […]