O you wicked careless heartless darling,
Tell me wherein I’ve been found out guilty,
That upon the rack you thus should stretch
That your given word you should have broken?
And you pressed my hand last night, so friendly,
Lisped to me your promise O so sweetly,
“Yes, I’ll come to you, depend upon it,
Dearest friend, I’ll meet you in your chamber.”
So I left my double doors unfastened,
Having checked the hinges’ operations,
Pleased they had no creak that could betray
What a night of waiting then has followed!
I kept stirring, tried to count the quarters;
Even if I slept a few brief minutes,
My poor heart was constantly awakened,
Roused me always from my gentle slumbers.
Yes, I blessed the secret gift of darkness,
Which discreetly covered all in quiet,
Happy in that universal silence,
Listening intently to the stillness,
If the slightest sound might now be stirring.
“Had she had such thoughts as I imagine,
Had she felt the feelings that possessed me,
She would not have waited for the morning:
By this hour she would have come already.”
*
Now a kitten pounces in the attic,
And a quick mouse skitters in the corner,
Something rustles somewhere in the building.
Always I had hope to hear your footstep,
Always I believed I’d hear your footstep.
So I lay in long and ever longer,
And the day already started graying,
Here there was a rustle, there a rustle.
“Can that be her door? Would it were my door.”
In my bed I sat up quick, bolt upright,
And was peering at the half-lit doorway,
Whether she was moving there behind it.
But both door-wings only stayed half-open,
Hanging silently upon their hinges.
And the day got light and ever lighter,
I’d already heard my neighbor’s door latch,
In his hurry to get off to business.
Soon I heard the rattle of the hackney,
So the city gates must have been opened,
And the whole pantechnicon got going,
All the marketplace’s toing, froing.
In the house too, people coming, going,
Up and down the stairs, backward and forward,
Doors were squeaking, footfalls ran a-patter;
Still I would not from my hopes divorce me
Than from all the beauty of existence.
When at last the sun, hated by lovers,
Met my windows and my walls together,
I jumped up and hurried to the garden,
Mingling my hot breath of pent-up yearning
With the airy coolness of the morning,
Maybe then to meet you in the garden:
But you’re neither in the hidden arbor
Nor in the high avenues of lindens.
1788