On days when joyful rapture

On days when joyful rapture

Floods through my breast drunken with bliss,

I, with sunny, happy gaze, display

My heavenly joy through music.

As in the foggy-grey distance

Apollo laughs from the east,

Thus the stars of word missing, too, smile

In the awesome night of the future.

And as the happy wave of the little brook

Flows through the changeful green of the meadows,

Thus may their life-wave, too, flow on

In its crystal-clear confines!

Until happy on the wings of fulfillment,

Gently shaken by a lofty shudder,

Their unclouded spirit soars aloft

To the sunny hills of transfiguration!