Frühling läßt sein blaues Band
Wieder flattern durch die Lüfte;
Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte
Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land.
Veilchen träumen schon,
Wollen balde kommen.
- Horch, von fern ein leiser Harfenton!
Frühling, ja du bist's!
Dich hab ich vernommen!
Eduard Mörike
Eduard Mörike:
It's Him!
Spring displays His ribbon blue,
fluttering through air's expanses.
sweet aromas over fences
touch with hope the lands anew.
Violets still dream,
dream of soon appearing.
Hark, I hear a harp, it seems!
Spring, it must be You! You I have been hearing!
That's vernal, not autumnal, you say? True: I did it just for a lark. And I won't do it again. (Unless vernally tempted, of course....)
Besides, this is one of the best-known poems from the tip of the Teutonic Tongue, especially the first two lines. Which are, of course, exceedingly simple and hence simply untranslatable.
By the way, I believe - but that's just my speculation, mind you - that Mörike wanted to emulate the soft, repetitive chords of a harp sounding from afar by lengthening the thirdlast line to a pentameter. If that bothers you, remove "distant" to make it a tetrameter. (If that bothers you, remove - crime of all crimes!, "leiser" in the original. Harps are not very loud, anyway.)
But I wouldn't recommend it. Even though the tongue stumbles (unless when singing - and a couple of composers, including Schumann, have even changed that very line to make it più cantabile), the prosody seems strangely balanced: 4,4,4,4 - 3,3,5,3,3 [with a dividing dash added for emphasis]. Of course, 4,4,4,4 - 3,3,4,3,3 would be a sort of balance, too. And it would forge a connection between the two parts, smoothing out the prosody. But, pray thee, who wants a smoothed-out spring, except perhaps a treacherous and demented translator?
Go and figure! Better yet, go and enjoy!
Because spring is to enjoy. Spring and its unruly behavior.
But there is further method to my madness:
How could you possibly resonate with the Fall on my website when you do not recall how once you resonated with the Spring?
