The middle of life

With yellow pears

and full of wild roses,

the land hangs over the lake,

you fair swans,

and drunk with kisses

you dunk your heads

into the sacred, sober water.

Woe is me! where, when

it is winter, will I get flowers,

and where the sunshine,

and the shade of the earth?

The walls stand

mute and cold; in the wind

the weathervanes rattle.