The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Novalis and his “Hymns to the Night”

[ 1 ] A poem is now to be recited for which, in a deeper sense, a suitable mood can only exist because the majority of the friends present have recently engaged in a thorough study of the subject matter of the spiritual world in connection with the entire historical development of humanity. What is presented here truly brings to our awareness how spiritual science or theosophy is not merely proclaimed in the world through the Theosophical Society, but that theosophy, as a teaching grounded in the great occult truths and wisdom, is something that has already flowed through the greatest minds of antiquity who sought a higher world. And we can, in fact, find many such figures in both ancient and modern times who truly demonstrate that they were, in their conceptions, ideas, feelings, and sensibilities—and in their outlook on life—completely imbued with a worldview from which they acted, one we might call theosophical, and that they unfolded their entire life activity in harmony with it. Such a truly unique personality lived in Novalis during the last three decades of the 18th century.

[ 2 ] Novalis did not live to be thirty years old, and it is to be hoped that through the recitation of his “Hymns to the Night,” an awareness will develop that these hymns express, as perfectly as was possible in the last three decades of the 18th century—in the most comprehensive sense—precisely the recognition of these spiritual-scientific truths.

[ 3 ] Novalis, whose secular name was Friedrich von Hardenberg, was born on May 2, 1772, into one of the most distinguished noble families. Anyone who has the opportunity to visit Weimar should not miss the chance to view the deeply impressive bust of Novalis. It is one of the monuments of classical Weimar that clearly testifies to the wealth of spiritual high culture associated with this era, with the end of the 18th century. Anyone who looks at this peculiar bust, if they are at all sensitive to such things, will indeed get the impression that from this one might say, a physiognomy that transcends the sphere of base humanity, a soul is expressed that was wholly rooted in the occult, in the spiritual worlds. And yet Novalis is one of those personalities who are living proof of how this spirituality, this ascent into the highest spiritual worlds attainable by human beings, is compatible with a firm, practical grounding in the reality of the physical world. Fundamentally, Novalis never came into serious conflict with the rather conservative traditions within whose circles his family lived, although it must be noted that this family always possessed a free receptivity to all that is noble and good, even if it might initially appear to people as something unknown.

[ 4 ] When we study Novalis’s biography —which is itself a work of art—and allow it to take effect on us, his father appears to us as a man of a practical disposition. Novalis was actually trained for a very practical profession in accordance with bourgeois life, one that required knowledge of jurisprudence and mathematics. He became a mining engineer. This is not the place to elaborate on how, particularly in this profession, he was a delight to those with whom he practiced. Nor is this the time to show how the mathematical and physical sciences, which formed the foundations of this profession, were not only completely mastered by him in all theory and practice, but how he was, above all, a capable mathematician. What is most important is what Novalis achieved as a spiritual being through mathematics in the inner structure of his being.

[ 5 ] If mathematics demonstrates in detail how it enables one to rise to a pure, senseless form of thinking, then when it comes to pointing to a prime example, we find such an example here in Novalis, where external observation plays no part. For him, life in the concepts of mathematics became a great poem that filled him with delight, so that his soul felt uplifted when he immersed himself in numbers and quantities. For him, it became the expression of divine creation, of divine thought, as it flashes into space in the directions and measures of force and crystallizes there. For his mind, mathematics became the path to the warmest, the path to spiritual life, while for the many people who know it only from the outside, it always remains something cold. This is all the more significant because in Novalis this spirituality confronts us with a tenderness and subtlety rarely found in any other of the greatest minds.

[ 6 ] Novalis was a contemporary of Goethe. However, one must not place what Novalis possessed of the spiritual on the same level as what Goethe possessed of it. Goethe had attained a certain level through a genuine path of initiation guided from the higher worlds. Novalis, on the other hand, lived a life that can best be described by saying: This young man, who left the physical plane at the age of twenty-nine and who gave more to the German spirit than a hundred and a thousand others, lived a life that was actually the memory of a previous one. Through a very specific event, the spiritual experiences of earlier incarnations were brought to the surface, presented themselves to the soul, and flowed out of that soul in delicate, rhythmically undulating poems.

[ 7 ] Thus we can see that Novalis understood how a human being can be lifted into a higher world with his soul. For Novalis, there was the possibility of seeing how waking daily life, with its everyday consciousness, is but a fragment of present-day human existence, and how every soul, which in the evening sinks into unconsciousness from its external perception of the day, in truth sinks into the spiritual world. He was able to feel deeply, to know that in those spiritual worlds into which the soul sinks at night lies the higher spiritual reality, that the day with all its impressions, even the impressions of sun and light, is but a fragment of the whole spiritual reality. And the stars, which send down the light of day as if in secret during the night, appeared to him only as a faint glow, while the very truth of the spiritual dawned upon him in the consciousness that illuminates the seer in the dazzling, bright astral light when he is able to transport himself into the night in spirit. Thus the worlds of the night, the true spiritual worlds, open up before Novalis, and thus the night becomes precious to him from this perspective.

[ 8 ] How did such a memory of past incarnations come to the surface in him? How did it come about that the experiences of the occult world, which we can describe today through occult knowledge, could emerge in him in such a unique way? Life had untied from his soul the wisdom of past incarnations that lay dormant within it. One must place the event that brought these spiritual experiences forth from this soul into the light of spiritual contemplation if one wishes to understand it. Only childish ignorance could equate this event with the encounter between Goethe and Friederike at Sesenheim. Such a comparison strikes one as rather crude and clumsy.

[ 9 ] During his stay in Grüningen, he met a thirteen-year-old girl. And mysteries of the soul unfold that one must never, without wounding the soul’s tenderness, call a love affair. In essence, in Sophie von Kühn—that was the girl’s name—we have something like a being departing from life. She fell ill very soon and died shortly thereafter. As the spirit broke free within Sophie von Kühn, the inner spiritual faculties broke free within Novalis’s own inner life.

[ 10 ] Perhaps, if one is willing to engage with it at all, the inability of a way of thinking bound to external experience could never become so apparent to you as in what we had to experience in the judgment of this relationship—which can only be recognized if one is able to perceive it fully in its spirituality—through our present material age. People who say that science must rely on documents, that it must above all bring to bear what is positively graspable on the physical plane—such natural scientists, who represent the rather distorted side, the side of natural science that has become a farce, have made us witness how they believed they could demonstrate from the documents that, fundamentally, Novalis had fallen prey to an illusion in Grüningen. Poetry is all well and good—so they say—but let’s look at the documents, let’s look at who Mr. von Rockenthien was, with whom Sophie von Kühn lived! - And let’s look—as one of the “Novalis experts” says—at a few little letters that Sophie von Kühn wrote to Novalis. Sophie von Kühn made a spelling mistake not just in every line, but almost in every word! And Novalis is said to have fallen victim to a great deception.

[ 11 ] In Jena, where she was staying last year, she also saw Goethe —and she made a deep impression on Goethe! Anyone who cannot grasp that these unique words of Goethe’s are worth more than any documents one might unearth—since all documents can lie—anyone who, when seeking to prove something, fails to consider providing the counterevidence as well, is beyond help despite all his scholarship.

[ 12 ] What did this event mean to Novalis? Sophie von Kühn died, and Novalis immersed himself in the mood: I am dying after her! From that moment on, he was never separated from her in his soul. The power that conveyed to him the experience of the night within his own soul had poured forth from the soul of the deceased Sophie von Kühn, and the great experiences, as he depicted them in his poems, dawned upon him.

[ 13 ] Once again, a woman crossed his path: Julie von Charpentier. But to him, she was merely the earthly symbol of the soul of the late Sophie von Kühn. The wisdom he poured into the “Hymns to the Night” was detached from his soul only through this first union of souls.

Here Marie von Sivers (Marie Steiner) recited the first and second hymns.

I

What living, sentient being does not love, above all the wondrous phenomena of the vast space around him, the most joyful light—with its colors, its rays and waves; its gentle omnipresence, like the awakening day. Like the innermost soul of life, it breathes through the restless giant world of the stars, and swims dancing in its blue flood—it breathes through the sparkling, eternally resting stone, the sentient, absorbing plant, and the wild, burning, multiform animal—but above all through the magnificent stranger with the expressive eyes, the floating gait, and the tenderly closed, resonant lips. Like a king of earthly nature, it summons every force to countless transformations, forges and breaks infinite bonds, hangs its heavenly image upon every earthly being. — Its presence alone reveals the wondrous splendor of the realms of the world.

I turned downward toward the sacred, inexpressible, mysterious night. Far away lies the world—sunk into a deep tomb—desolate and lonely is its place. Deep melancholy stirs in the strings of my breast. I wish to sink down into dewdrops and mingle with the ashes. — Distant memories, youthful desires, childhood dreams, the brief joys and vain hopes of a whole long life come in gray robes, like evening mist after the sun has set. In other realms, light dawned upon the merry gatherings. Should it never return to its children, who await it with the faith of innocence?

What wells up so forebodingly beneath the heart, and swallows the soft air of melancholy? Do you, too, take pleasure in us, dark night? What do you hold beneath your cloak that, though invisible to me, touches my soul so powerfully? Delicious balm drips from your hand, from the bundle of poppies. You lift the heavy wings of the spirit. Dark and inexpressible, we feel moved—I see a solemn face, joyfully startled, that bends toward me gently and devoutly, and beneath infinitely entwined curls reveals the mother’s tender youth. How poor and childish the light now seems to me—how joyful and blessed is the day’s farewell — So, merely because the night turns your servants away from you, you sowed the luminous spheres across the vastness of space, to proclaim your omnipotence—your return—in the times of your absence. More heavenly than those flashing stars, the infinite eyes that the night has opened within us seem to us. They see farther than the palest of those countless hosts—needing no light, they pierce the depths of a loving heart—which fills a higher space with unspeakable delight. Praise to the Queen of the World, the lofty herald of sacred worlds, the nurturer of blissful love — she sends you to me — tender beloved — lovely sun of the night, — now I am awake — for I am yours and mine — you have proclaimed the night to me as life — made me human — consume my body with spiritual fervor, that I may joyfully mingle more intimately with you and then the wedding night may last forever.

II

Must morning always return? Does the power of the earthly never end? Unfortunate busyness consumes the heavenly approach of the night. Will love’s secret sacrifice never burn eternally? Time has been allotted to the light; but timeless and spaceless is the night’s dominion. — Eternal is the duration of sleep. Holy sleep — do not too rarely bless those consecrated to the night in this earthly toil. Only fools fail to recognize you and know of no sleep save the shadow you cast upon us with compassion in that twilight of the true night. They do not feel you in the golden flood of grapes—in the almond tree’s wondrous oil, and the brown sap of the poppy. They do not know that it is you who hovers around the tender maiden’s bosom and makes her lap a heaven—they do not realize that from ancient tales you step forth, opening the heavens, and bear the key to the dwellings of the blessed, silent messenger of infinite mysteries.

[ 14 ] Thus far does the poem lead us into the worlds in which Novalis lived as a spirit, when he was within his experience of eternal wisdom.

[ 15 ] You will have heard many times that such an ascent into the higher worlds is linked to a penetration into yet other mysteries of existence. Therefore, his gaze also had to wander back to the times of the distant past, when that which now lives in the world was still in the bosom of the Deity and had not yet descended into the earthly body. When the souls of the natural kingdoms still lived in the pure spirituality that could only be attained in the astral world, that is when what Novalis revealed to the seer in mighty images came to pass as he turned his gaze backward. He saw the time when the souls of plants, animals, and humans were still companions of divine beings, when that interruption of consciousness had not yet occurred—which for humans appears in the alternation between night and day—and when there was still nothing of that interruption expressed in the words birth and death. All life flowed in the spiritual-soul realm, and the words birth and death had no meaning yet for the course of events in the distant past.

[ 16 ] Then the thought of death struck into this life of the gods and divine earthly beings, and the spiritual world descended into the earthly world. The divine beings were concealed within earthly bodies; the divine beings were enchanted into the realms of minerals, plants, and animals. But whoever becomes capable of returning to the spiritual world finds the gods in all manifestations; they learn to recognize that the gods were once connected with human beings before earthly life existed. And they learn what the life of the soul is; they learn to recognize that the day, with its impressions, is a faint fragment of the great world whose essence is duration, eternity. And they learn to demystify what hovers in the realms of nature.

[ 17 ] This entered Novalis’s soul when, in his Eternal, he was united with Sophie’s soul—and died after her. And in this dying after her, the spirit came alive. There he had experienced this “dying and becoming,” and there he realized what he calls his “magical idealism.”

This was followed by the recitation of the fourth hymn, starting at line 20, and the beginning of the fifth hymn.

III

Once, when I shed bitter tears, when my hope dissolved in pain, and I stood alone on the barren hill that sheltered the form of my life in a narrow, dark space—alone as no one had ever been, driven by unspeakable fear—powerless, nothing but a thought of misery. — As I looked around for help, unable to move forward or backward, and clung with infinite longing to my fleeing, fading life: — then came from blue distances—from the heights of my former bliss—a twilight shiver, and at once the bond of birth—the light’s fetter—was torn. There fled earthly glory, and my sorrow with it—together the melancholy flowed into a new, unfathomable world — you, night’s rapture, slumber of heaven, came over me — the landscape rose gently; above the landscape hovered my liberated, newborn spirit. The hill became a cloud of dust — through the cloud I saw the transfigured features of my beloved. Eternity rested in her eyes—I took her hands, and the tears became a sparkling, unbreakable bond. Millennia swept downward into the distance, like thunderstorms. Upon her neck I wept tears of rapture for the new life. — It was the first, only dream — and only since then have I felt an eternal, unchanging faith in the night sky and its light, the beloved.

IV

Now I know when the last morning will be—when the light no longer drives away the night and love—when slumber will be eternal and nothing but an inexhaustible dream. I feel heavenly weariness within me. — Far and wearying was my pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulcher, bearing the cross. The crystalline wave, inaudible to the common senses, wells up into the dark bosom of the hill, at whose foot the earthly flood breaks; whoever has tasted it, whoever stood atop the world’s border mountain and looked across to the new land, the abode of the night—truly, he does not return to the bustle of the world, to the land where light dwells in eternal unrest.

Up there he builds himself huts, huts of peace, yearns and loves, gazes across, until the most perfect of all hours draws him down into the well of the spring—the earthly floats on top, is driven back by storms, but what has been sanctified by love’s touch flows, dissolved, through hidden passages into the realm beyond, where, like fragrances, it mingles with slumbering loves. Still you rouse, cheerful light, the weary to work—instilling joyful life within me—but you do not lure me away from memory’s moss-covered monument. Gladly will I move my diligent hands, look around wherever you need me—praise the full splendor of your radiance — undaunted, I follow the beautiful interplay of your artificial work — gladly I observe the meaningful course of your mighty, luminous clock — I fathom the balance of forces and the rules of the wondrous play of countless spaces and their times. But my secret heart remains faithful to the night, and to creative love, its daughter. Can you show me a heart eternally faithful? Does your sun have friendly eyes that recognize me? Do your stars grasp my longing hand? Do they give me back the tender touch and the caressing word? Have you adorned them with colors and light outlines—or was it she who gave your adornment a higher, dearer meaning? What delight, what pleasure does your life offer that outweighs the raptures of death? Does not everything that inspires us bear the color of the night? She carries you maternally, and to her you owe all your glory. You would vanish into yourself—you would dissolve into endless space—if she did not hold you, did not bind you, so that you might grow warm and, ablaze, bring forth the world. Truly I was before you were—the Mother sent me with my siblings to inhabit your world, to sanctify it with love, that it might become an eternally beheld monument—to plant it with unfading flowers. Yet these divine thoughts have not yet ripened—there are still few traces of our revelation—one day your clock will show the end of time, when you will become like us, and, full of longing and fervor, you will extinguish yourself and die. Within me I feel the end of your busyness—heavenly freedom, blissful return. In wild agony I recognize your separation from our homeland, your resistance against the ancient, glorious heaven. Your rage and your raging are in vain. The cross stands unburnable—a banner of victory for our race.

I surge across,
And every torment
Will one day be a thorn
Of voluptuousness.
A little while yet,
Then I am free,
And lie drunk
In the bosom of love.
Infinite life
Surges mightily within me,
I look down from above
Upon you.
On that hill
Your radiance fades—
A shadow brings
The cooling wreath.
O! Drink, my beloved,
Deeply of me,
That I may slumber
And love.
I feel death’s
Rejuvenating flood,
Transforming my blood
Into balm and ether —
I live by day
Full of faith and courage
And die at night
In holy fervor.

[ 18 ] Thus Novalis was able to look back into the times when the gods were among men, when everything unfolded spiritually, when spirits and souls had not yet descended into earthly bodies. Thus he could see the transition: how death struck the world, and how man in those times depicted death in its earthly shadow, and how he sought to beautify it through imagination, through art. But death remained a mystery.

[ 19 ] Then something of universal significance entered. And Novalis could perceive the universal significance of what was happening in the world at that time. The souls of the realms of nature had descended into the world. The memory of the spiritual source of existence had been forgotten, yet a special spiritual being had remained in this universal womb from which everything had descended. One being had remained behind for the time being; it had remained above and had only temporarily sent down its gift of grace, so that when humanity needed it most, it might itself descend into the earthly sphere. The being of spiritual light had remained in the sphere of spirituality above, that being which hid itself behind the physical solar being. It dwells in the heavenly spheres and descends when humanity needs it, so that humanity may once again be carried up into the spiritual worlds. And it descended when, with the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ appeared in a physical human body.

[ 20 ] One comprehends this Christ in his universal unfolding when one traces what lived in Jesus of Nazareth back to its spiritual origin, to that spiritual light. Then one also understands how this was involved in what was the inscrutable mystery of death. To the Greek mind, death appeared as a pondering youth, as a riddle that could not be solved. But the Greeks, too, sensed that the riddle hidden in the soul of this youth had found its solution in the event of Golgotha, that there life had triumphed over death, and that this had marked a new turning point for humanity.

[ 21 ] Novalis was able to perceive this; and through this he received the faith in the mysteries, the mystical knowledge of the star that guided the ancient magical sages. Then the whole essence of what the death of Christ signifies became clear to him. There, in the night of the soul, the mystery of death, the mystery of Christ, was revealed to him. It was then that this unique individual came to know—through her memory of past lives—what Christ, what the event of Golgotha, meant for the world.

Following this, Marie von Sivers (Marie Steiner) recited the conclusion of the fifth and the sixth hymn.

V

Over the widely scattered tribes of humanity, an iron fate once reigned with silent force. A dark, heavy veil lay over their anxious souls—the Earth was infinite—the abode of the gods and their homeland. For ages its mysterious structure had stood. Above the red mountains of the morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the all-igniting, living light. An ancient giant bore the blissful world. Firmly beneath the mountains lay the primordial sons of Mother Earth. Powerless in their destructive fury against the new, glorious race of gods and their kin, the joyful humans. The sea’s dark, green depths were a goddess’s bosom. In the crystalline grottoes, a lush people reveled. Rivers, trees, flowers, and animals possessed human reason. Sweeter tasted the wine, a gift of visible youthful abundance—a god in the grapes — a loving, maternal goddess, rising up in full golden sheaves — the holy intoxication of love, a sweet service of the fairest goddess — an eternally colorful festival of the children of heaven and the inhabitants of earth, life surged, like a spring, through the centuries — All generations childlike revered the tender, manifold flame as the highest thing in the world. It was but a thought. A dreadful dream image,

That approached the joyful tables with terror
And shrouded the mind in wild dread.
Here even the gods knew no counsel,
That filled the anxious breast with comfort.
Mysterious was this monster’s path,
Whose fury no plea and no gift could quell;
It was Death who interrupted this feast of pleasure
With fear and pain and tears.

Now forever separated from all things,
That which here stirs the heart in sweet delight,
Separated from the beloved ones who here below
Are moved by vain longing and long sorrow,
A faint dream seemed to be the dead man’s only lot,
Only powerless struggle imposed upon him.
The wave of pleasure was shattered
Against the rock of endless vexation.

With a bold spirit and a fervent passion
Man embellished the hideous mask,
A gentle youth extinguishes the light and rests —
Gentle is the end, like a breath of the harp.
Memory melts in a cool flood of shadows,
So sang the song to the sad need.
Yet the eternal night remained unsolved,
The solemn sign of a distant power.

The old world drew to a close. The pleasure garden of the young race withered—upward into the freer, wild space strove the unchildlike, growing humans. The gods vanished with their retinue—nature stood lonely and lifeless. With an iron chain, she bound the meager number and the strict measure. As if into dust and air, the immeasurable bloom of life crumbled into dark words. Gone was the invoking faith, and the all-transforming, all-uniting heavenly companion, the imagination. A cold north wind blew unkindly over the frozen field, and the frozen homeland of wonders vanished into the ether. The distant reaches of the heavens filled with luminous worlds. Into the deeper sanctuary, into the higher realm of the mind, the soul of the world withdrew with its powers—to reign there until the dawn of the world’s glorious day. No longer was the light of the gods a dwelling place or a heavenly sign—they cast the veil of night over themselves. The night became the mighty womb of revelations—into it the gods returned—slumbered, to emerge in new, more glorious forms upon the transformed world. Among the people, who had matured too soon and become defiantly estranged from the blissful innocence of youth, the new world appeared with a face never before seen—in the poverty of a humble hut—a son of the first virgin and mother—the infinite fruit of a mysterious embrace. The blooming wisdom of the East, foreshadowing the dawn, first recognized the beginning of the new age — A star showed her the way to the king’s humble cradle. In the distant future, names paid homage to him with splendor and fragrance, the highest wonders of nature. Lonely, the heavenly heart unfolded into a calyx of almighty love—turned toward the Father’s lofty countenance and resting upon the prophetic bosom of the lovely -serious mother. With adoring fervor, the prophetic eye of the blossoming child gazed upon the days of the future, toward his beloved ones, the offspring of his divine lineage, unconcerned with the earthly fate of his days. Soon the most childlike spirits, wondrously moved by deep love, gathered around him. Like flowers, a new, foreign life sprouted in his presence. Inexhaustible words and the most joyful of messages fell like sparks of a divine spirit from his friendly lips. From a distant shore, born beneath Hellas’s serene sky, a singer came to Palestine and surrendered his whole heart to the child of wonder:

You are the youth who for a long time
Has stood upon our graves in deep contemplation;
A comforting sign in the darkness —
The joyful beginning of a higher humanity.
What has cast us into deep sorrow,
Now draws us away with sweet longing.
In death, eternal life was revealed,
You are death, and you are the one who first heals us.

The singer journeyed joyfully to Indostan—his heart intoxicated with sweet love; and poured it out in fiery songs beneath that gentle sky, so that a thousand hearts turned toward him, and the joyful message grew upward in a thousand branches. Soon after the singer’s departure, that precious life fell victim to humanity’s deep decay—he died in his youth, torn away from the beloved world, from his weeping mother and his timid friends. The lovely mouth emptied the dark chalice of unspeakable suffering—in terrible anguish, the hour of the new world’s birth drew near. He struggled hard against the terrors of the old death—the weight of the old world lay heavily upon him. Once more he looked kindly upon his mother—then came the liberating hand of eternal love—and he fell asleep. For but a few days a deep veil hung over the roaring sea, over the trembling land—countless tears were shed by his loved ones—the mystery was unsealed—heavenly spirits lifted the ancient stone from the dark grave. Angels sat by the slumbering one—gently formed from his dreams—awakened in new divine glory, he ascended to the heights of the newborn world—with his own hand he buried the old corpse in the abandoned cave, and with an almighty hand placed the stone, which no power can lift, upon it.

Still your loved ones weep tears of joy, tears of emotion and endless thanks at your grave—still long to see you, joyfully startled, rise again—and rise with you; long to see you weep with sweet fervor at your mother’s blessed bosom, walk solemnly with friends, speak words as if plucked from the tree of life; they see you hastening with full longing into the Father’s arms, bringing young humanity and the inexhaustible cup of the golden future. The Mother soon hastened after you—in heavenly triumph — She was the first to be with you in the new homeland. Long ages have passed since then, and in ever greater splendor your new creation stirred—and thousands, emerging from pain and torment, full of faith, longing, and loyalty, followed you — to reign with you and the heavenly Virgin in the realm of love — to serve in the temple of heavenly death and be yours for eternity.

The stone has been lifted —
Humanity has risen —
We all remain yours
And feel no bonds.
The harshest sorrow flees
Before your golden chalice,
When earth and life fade away,
At the Last Supper.

Death calls to the wedding —
The lamps burn bright —
The virgins are at their posts —
There is no lack of oil —
If only the distance
Already echoed with your procession,
And the stars called to us
With human tongues and sound.

Toward you, Mary,
A thousand hearts already rise.
In this shadow life
They longed only for you.
They hope to be healed
With a longing full of anticipation —
If you, holy being,
Press them to your faithful breast.

So many who, burning with passion
Consumed by bitter torment
And fleeing this world
Turned to you;
Who appeared to us as helpers
In many a time of need and pain —
We now come to them,
To be there forever.

Now weep at no grave,
For pain, whoever believes with love,
The sweet possession of love
Shall not be stolen from anyone—
To soothe his longing,
The night inspires him—
By faithful children of heaven
His heart is guarded.

Take heart, life marches on
Toward eternal life;
Expanded by inner fervor
Our spirit is transfigured.
The world of stars will dissolve
Into the golden wine of life,
We will enjoy it
And be bright stars.

Love is set free,
And there is no more separation.
Full life surges
Like an endless sea.
Just _one_ night of bliss —
An eternal poem —
And the sun for us all
Is God’s face.

VI. Longing for Death

Down into the earth’s bosom,
Away from the realm of light,
The fury of pain and wild assault
Is a sign of joyful departure.
We arrive in the narrow boat
Swiftly at the heavenly shore.

Blessed be the eternal night,
Blessed be the eternal slumber.
The day has warmed us well,
And the long sorrow has withered.
Our desire for foreign lands has faded,
We want to go home to the Father.

What do we have in this world
With our love and faithfulness.
The old is cast aside,
What then is the new to us?
O! Lonely and deeply sorrowful stands
Whoever loves the past with fervor and piety.

The past, when the senses lightly
Burned in high flames,
The Father’s hand and face
People still recognized,
And of noble spirit, simple
Many still resembled their archetype.

The past, when still in full bloom
Ancient lineages flourished,
And children for the Kingdom of Heaven
Longed for torment and death.
And though pleasure and life spoke,
Yet many a heart broke for love.

The ancient times, when in the fervor of youth
God Himself revealed Himself
And in the courage of love
Consecrated His sweet life to early death.
And did not drive away fear and pain,
So that He might remain dear to us.

With anxious longing we gaze upon them
Enveloped in dark night,
In this earthly life, never
Will the burning thirst be quenched.
We must journey to our homeland,
To behold this holy time.

What still holds back our return,
Our loved ones have long since rested.
Their grave closes our life’s journey,
Now we feel sorrow and dread.
We have nothing left to seek—
The heart is full—the world is empty.

Infinite and mysterious
A sweet shiver flows through us—
It seems to me, from deep distances
An echo of our sorrow
Our loved ones surely long as well
And sent us the breath of longing.

Down to the sweet bride,
To Jesus, the Beloved—
Take comfort, as evening twilight falls
Upon the lovers, the sorrowful.
A dream breaks our bonds
And lowers us into the Father’s bosom.