Classic Poem

The day has been vivid with lightning
but soon now the stars will come out,
the stars with their silence. The meadows
resound with the peep of the frogs.
O'er the tremulous leaves of the poplars
trips lightly a delicate joy.
By daytime what flames! what explosions!
What peace with the night!

The stars will now soon be unfolding
above in the tender, clear sky.
Just there, close beside the gay frog-choir,
a stream sobs monotonously.
And of all that mysterious tumult,
of all that uproarious storm,
is left but a sweet sound of sobbing
throughout the moist night.

That tempest that seemed never ending
now ends in the song of a stream!
Remain from the frail lightning flashes
soft cloudlets of purple and gold.
O my grief, that art weary, take rest!
The cloud that was blackest by day
is the one that to me seems most rosy
at coming of night.

What swallow flights circling about me!
What calls in the clear limpid light!
The hunger of destitute daytime
prolongs now the garrulous feast;
for the nestlings had not in the tempest
the whole of their morsel, though small.
Nor I ... and what flights now, what callings,
my luminous night!

Ding ... dong ... and they say to me: Sleep thou!
They sing to me: Sleep! It is sleep
they are humming. They are whispering: Sleep thou!
Faint sounds from the blue-glimmering dark. . . .
And they seem to me songs of the cradle,
which make me again as I was. . . .
My mother I heard ... and then nothing ...
at falling of night.