Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau

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Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau Poems

I

In the west the sun departing
Leaves the weary day asleep,
...

I

In the sky the sun is failing,
And the weary day would sleep,
...

Passing lovely was the night,
Silver clouds flew o'er us,
Spring, methought, with splendor dight
Led the happy chorus.
...

Three gipsy men I saw one day
Stretched out on the grass together,
As wearily o'er the sandy way
...

His sweet rose here oversea
I must gather sadly;
Which, beloved, unto thee
I would bring how gladly!
...

Ich wandre fort ins ferne Land;
Noch einmal blickt' ich um , bewegt,
Und sah, wie sie den Mund geregt
Und wie gewinket ihre Hand.
...

Diese Rose pflück ich hier,
In der fremden Ferne;
Liebes Mädchen, dir, ach dir
Brächt ich sie so gerne!
...

'Möchte wieder in die Gegend,
Wo ich einst so selig war,
Wo ich lebte, wo ich träumte
Meiner Jugend schönstes Jahr!'
...

Sleepless night, the rushing rain,
While my heart with ceaseless pain
Hears the mournful past subsiding
Or the uncertain future striding.
...

Eye of darkness, dim dominioned,
Stay, enchant me with thy might,
Earnest, gentle, dreamy-pinioned,
...

Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau Biography

Nikolaus Lenau was the nom de plume of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau (25 August 1802, Schadat, near Temesvár, Hungary – 22 August 1850, Oberdöbling, near Vienna), a German language Austrian poet. Biography He was born at Schadat, now Lenauheim, Romania. His father, a Habsburg government official, died in 1807 in Budapest, leaving his children in the care of their mother, who remarried in 1811. In 1819 Nikolaus went to the University of Vienna; he subsequently studied Hungarian law at Pozsony (Bratislava) and then spent the next four years qualifying himself in medicine. Unable to settle down to any profession, he began writing verse. The disposition to sentimental melancholy inherited from his mother, stimulated by disappointments in love and by the prevailing fashion of the romantic school of poetry, descended into gloom after his mother's death in 1829. Soon afterwards, however, a legacy from his grandmother enabled him to devote himself wholly to poetry. His first published poems appeared in 1827, Johann Gabriel Seidl in Johann Gabriel Seidl's Aurora. In 1831 he moved to Stuttgart, where he published a volume of Gedichte (1832) dedicated to the Swabian poet, Gustav Schwab. He also made the acquaintance of Ludwig Uhland, Justinus Kerner, Karl Mayer and others. His restless spirit longed for change, and he determined to seek peace and freedom in America. In October 1832 he landed at Baltimore and settled on a homestead in Ohio. He also lived six months in New Harmony, Indiana, with a group called the Harmony Society. Life in the primeval forest fell lamentably short of the ideal he had pictured. He disliked Americans with their eternal English lisping of dollars (englisches Talergelispel), and in 1833 returned to Germany. The appreciation of his first volume of poems revived his spirits. From then on he lived partly in Stuttgart and partly in Vienna. In 1836 appeared his Faust, in which he laid bare his own soul to the world); in 1837, Savonarola, an epic in which freedom from political and intellectual tyranny is insisted upon as essential to Christianity. In 1838 his Neuere Gedichte proved that Savonarola had been the result of a passing exaltation. Of these new poems, some of the finest were inspired by his hopeless passion for Sophie von Löwenthal, the wife of a friend. In 1842 appeared Die Albigenser, and in 1844 he began writing his Don Juan, a fragment of which was published after his death. Soon afterwards his never well-balanced mind began to show signs of aberration, and in October 1844 he was placed under restraint (after jumping out of a window one morning and running down a street, while shouting "Revolt! Freedom! Help! Fire!") for the rest of his life. He died in the asylum at Oberdöbling near Vienna and was buried in the cemetery of Weidling, near Klosterneuburg. On his grave is the replica of an open book with an extract from one of his poems (An Frau Kleyle) inscribed on the lefthand page, while on the righthand page there is the final stanza from his poem Vergangenheit. The city of Stockerau in Lower Austria has proclaimed itself the "Lenau City", because Nikolaus Lenau went on extensive walks in the alluvial forests next to Stockerau and the Danube and was inspired to write one of his most famous lyric poems, "Schilflieder", during this time. He has various streets and squares named after him in Vienna and the surrounding area. Lenau's fame rests mainly upon his shorter poems; even his epics are essentially lyric in quality. His excellent poem, "Herbst", expresses the sadness and melancholy he felt after his sojourn in the United States and his strenuous travels across the Atlantic to return to Europe. In it, he mourns the loss of youth, the passing of time and his own sense of futility. The poem is archetypal of Lenau's style and culminates with the speaker dreaming of death as a final escape from emptiness. He is the greatest modern lyric poet of Austria, and the typical representative in German literature of that pessimistic Weltschmerz which, beginning with Lord Byron Lord Byron, reached its culmination in the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi. Lenau's Sämtliche Werke were first published in 4 vols. by Anastasius Grün in 1855, but there are several more modern editions, as those by Max Koch in Joseph Kürschner's Deutsche Nationalliteratur of 1888 (vols. 154 and 155), and E. Castle (2 vols., 1900).)

The Best Poem Of Nikolaus Franz Niembsch Edler von Strehlenau

Sedge Songs

I

In the west the sun departing
Leaves the weary day asleep,
And the willows trail their streamers
In these waters still and deep.

Flow, my bitter tears, flow ever;
All I love I leave behind;
Sadly whisper here the willows,
And the reed shakes in the wind.

Into my deep lonely sufferings
Tenderly you shine afar,
As athwart these reeds and rushes
Trembles soft yon evening star.

II

Oft at eve I love to saunter
Where the sedge sighs drearily,
By entangled hidden footpaths,
Love! and then I think of thee.

When the woods gloom dark and darker,
Sedges in the night-wind moan,
Then a faint mysterious wailing
Bids me weep, still weep alone.

And methinks I hear it wafted,
Thy sweet voice, remote yet clear,
Till thy song, descending slowly,
Sinks into the silent mere.

III

Angry sunset sky,
Thunder-clouds o'erhead,
Every breeze doth fly,
Sultry air and dead.

From the lurid storm
Pallid lightnings break,
Their swift transient form
Flashes through the lake.

And I seem to see
Thyself, wondrous nigh--
Streaming wild and free
Thy long tresses fly.

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