Not surprising for a poem that seems sheer music, it attracted some twenty-five-plus composers, some very well known; not to forget the (excellently translated) lyrics in English set to music by Charles Ives. There exist several German titles, most prominently "Bitte". (I have, however, stuck to the original first-line title for purpose of this webpage.)

The title "Bitte" (this German noun means request, also wish or prayer) fits the poem very well, but its implications might strike some readers as politically incorrect.

In this famous poem, Lenau asks the "dark eye" of night to rest on him, to remove the world from him, and to be the lone power over his life for all time to come.

Strangely enough, there is a common word in German (i.e., "umnachtet") whose literal meaning is to be surrounded by night, but whose real meaning is to be mentally ill, to be insane.

I am not suggesting that Lenau wished (or even foresaw) his own fate. But it is a fact that he spent the last years of his life in an insane asylum in Vienna...

Lenau Museum, Stockerau, Lower Austria