Funeral in the Family Grave – His friend, the watchman, was still awake – My face buries itself weeping on your neck!
Prayer and Meditation at the Family Grave
His friend, the watchman, was still awake, the town hall roof gleamed like silver, and the moon was shining overhead. Little did he know how badly he suffered, but his heart beat with every step. And the knapsack pressed him. The alley was so long, so long, and on top of that the voice that sang above him: When the Maiventilatorl blows! Now a lilac bush bent over the fence, and the Mother of God, carved out of stone, stood white in front of the cathedral portal.
Here he stood still for a while and heard a jackdaw whistling shrilly high up around the tower cross. Then, in the little house on the left, the lion landlord put out his lights, and the cathedral clock slowly struck ten. The fountains murmured as if in a dream, the nightingale beat in the linden tree, and everything was as usual! So he tore the rose out of his coat and banged it into the pavement with his stick so that the sparks flew, and left. The little lamp flickered red above the gate, and the forest into which his path was lost stood there shakily in the moonlight...
It wasn't until he was up on the saints that he remembered everything again, when the path curved around the beech tree. The leaves rustled and he stood and stood staring down where the roofs sparkled. There was the garden and there the house, and now it was over and now it was over, and - the roofs were sparkling! His heart was beating wildly, his heart was not beating piously: when will I come, when will I come, when will I come back! But he never came back.
Burial
The field grays from dawn to dusk, when a pale streak illuminates the far East; One soon sees the morning star disappear in the light, and yet the full moon still stands in the spruce forest: So my shy gaze, which is already pressing the distance, is still sunk in the painful happiness of the night of farewell. Your blue eyes stand before me in a dark sea, your kiss, your breath blows around me, your whisper still here.
My face buries itself weeping on your neck, and crimson blackness weaves close before my eyes. The sun is coming; - she shoos the dream away in a trice, and a shudder sweeps down from the mountains towards me.