When summer came again
and the flowers beautiful sprang
from the grass where the birds sang
is where I went to a meadow wide,
where a spring gushed clear,
at the forest edge it flowed,
where the nightingale sang,
where by the spring stood a tree
where I found happiness in a dream –
I was fleeing before the sun
escaping to the cool water
where the lovely linden
cooled me in its shade
where I sat at the fountain
and my worries fled before me
when sleep came over me
and it was there
that all of life smiled on me
and my cares fell away from my soul
where it soared in heaven
and my body was calm and my heart was filled
how right it all seemed to me
how like a world God would make
if God could dream the dreams I dream.
And I wished I could sleep forever
and I would have
but for those damned crows
where they cawed and croaked
may they all rot in hell where
there is a special place for crows
and their calling and stealing
the happiness of innocent sleepers
I would have murdered every one
if I only I’d had enough stones to throw.
So I asked a wise old philosopher
to interpet to me my dream
and he sighed and he thought and he made a face
and he spoke of meaning and significance
And of dreaming and living and being
and now I know these two things:
That crows and philosophers are good for nothing
and dreams are better than life
but to dream you first must live
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Inspired by Dô der sumer komen was
by Walther von der Vogelweide
reimagined by E.T. Hansen