cious lady;
Fresh young blood and youthful vigour
From such wounds not long can suffer,
And already gentle slumber,
Messenger of health, doth soothe him.
He to-day can take an airing."
Spoke and left; for, his attention
Many wounded men were craving,
And he hated useless gossip.

Softly entered Margaretta
Now the sick-room of young Werner,
Bashful and yet curious whether
All was true the doctor told her.
Gently slumbering lay young Werner,
Pale in youthful beauty, looking
Like a statue. As if dreaming,
He lay holding, o'er his forehead
And his healing wound, his right hand,
As one who from glaring sunlight
Wishes to protect his eyes;
Round his lips a smile was playing.

Long on him gazed Margaretta--
Long and longer. Thus in old times
In the forest of Mount Ida
Gazed the goddess, fair Diana,
On Endymion the sleeper.
Pity held her eye a captive;
Ah, and pity is a fruitful
Soil for love's sweet plant to grow in.
From a tiny seed 'tis spreading
In this ground so rich and fertile,
Which it permeates completely
With its thousand fibrous rootlets.

Thrice already Margaretta
To the door her way had wended,
But as many times returning
She at last approached the bedside.
On the table stood a cooling
Potion, medicines in bottles;
But she neither touched the cooling
Potion nor the other bottles.
Timidly she bent there o'er him,
Timidly and hardly breathing,
Lest her breath might wake the sleeper.
Long she gazed at his closed eyelids
And involuntarily stooping,
With her lips--But who interprets
All the strange mysterious actions
Of a first sweet loving passion?
Well-nigh can my song conjecture
That she really wished to kiss him;
But she did not; startled sighing,
Turned abruptly--like a timid
Fawn she hurried from the chamber.

Like a man who, long accustomed
To the gloom and damp of dungeons,
Seems bewildered when beholding,
For the first time free fair Nature:
"Hast thou not, O sun, grown brighter?
Has the sky not deeper colours?"
And his eyes are nearly dazzled
By the light so long denied him:
Thus returns the convalescent