Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PICTURES OF TRAVEL: THE BALTIC, PART 2: 3. THE SHIPWRECKED ONE, by HEINRICH HEINE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PICTURES OF TRAVEL: THE BALTIC, PART 2: 3. THE SHIPWRECKED ONE, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Hope and love! All crumbled to atoms
Last Line: Deep in the humid sand.
Subject(s): Disasters; Shipwrecks


HOPE and love! All crumbled to atoms!
And I myself, like to a corpse
Thrown up by the growling sea,
Lie on the strand,
The dreary, naked strand.
Before me, the watery waste is heaving
Behind me lie but sorrow and misery,
And over me high are passing the clouds,
The formless grey-hued daughters of air,
Who out of the sea, in misty buckets,
Draw up the water,
And wearily drag it and drag it,
Then spill it again in the sea,
A mournful and tedious business,
And useless as e'en my own life.
The billows murmur, the sea-mews are screaming,
Olden remembrances over me drift,
Dreams long forgotten and images perish'd,
Painfully sweet come to light.

In the North a woman is living,
A beauteous woman, royally fair.
Her slender figure, like a tall cypress,
By an alluring white robe is embraced;
Her dark and flowing tresses,
Like to a blissful night, are streaming
Down from her lofty, braid-crowned head,
And dreamily-sweetly form ringlets
Over her sweet pale face;
And out of her sweet pale face,
Large and o'erpowering, beams an eye
Like a black sun in radiance.

O thou black sun, how often,
Enchantingly often, I drank from thee
Wild flames of inspiration,
And stood and reel'd, all drunk with fire, --
Then hover'd a mild and dovelike smile
Round the high-contracted haughty lips,
And the high-contracted haughty lips
Breath'd forth words as sweet as moonlight,
And tender as the rose's fragrance --
And then my spirit ascended,
And flew, like an eagle, straight up into heaven!

Peace, ye billows and sea-mews!
All is now over, happiness, hope,
Hope, ay, and love! I lie on the shore,
A lonely and shipwrecked man,
And press my countenance glowing
Deep in the humid sand.





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