My heart, my heart is mournful

My heart, my heart is mournful,

yet May glows so blithely;

I stand leaning against the linden

high upon the old bastion.

Far below flows the blue

moat in quiet peace;

a boy is floating in a rowboat,

fishing and whistling there.

Farther along there rises a welcoming sight,

in diminutive, colorful guise:

pavilions and gardens and people

and oxen and fields and woods.

The maidens are bleaching their laundry,

and skipping about in the grass;

the millwheel is churning out dust like diamonds:

I hear its distant hum.

By the old grey tower

a sentry-box stands;

a lad dressed in red

is pacing there, back and forth.

He is toying with his musket

that gleams in the sunset's rays,

presenting and then shouldering it;

I wish he would shoot me dead.