1.
O fly with me, and be my wife,
And to my heart for comfort come!
Far, far away hence be my heart,
Thy fatherland and father’s home.
If thou’lt not go, I here will die,
And all alone abandon thee;
And if thou in thy father’s home
Dost stay, thou’lt seem abroad to be.
2.
A genuine national song, heard by Heine on the Rhine.
There fell a frost in a night of spring,
It fell on the tender flowerets blue,
They all soon wither’d and faded.
A youth once loved a maiden full well,
They secretly fled away from the house,
Unknown to father and mother.
They wander’d here and they wander’d there,
And neither joy nor star could they find,
And so they droop’d and they perish’d.
3.
Upon her grave a linden is springing,
Where birds and the evening breeze are singing,
And on the green sward under it
The miller’s boy and his sweetheart sit.
The winds are blowing so softly and fleetly,
The birds are singing so sadly and sweetly,
The prattling lovers are mute by-and-by,
They weep and they know not the reason why.