Ecstasy

Bow they toward me in drunk night

Forest fastness and what’s far,

I breathe blue and freshest stars

And of dreams their wounding bright,

O then the intoxicated world

Lies like a woman on my heart,

Blazes in ecstatic smart,

Whose cry is fatuously hurled.

And out of farmost deeps arise

Beastly groans and beating wings

Echo of forgotten things

Greeny childish seaside days,

Cry of offering and blood,

Death by fire and cloister cell,

All that is my blood’s own swell,

All that’s holy, all that’s good!

Naught is inside, naught is outside,

Naught is below, naught is above,

All that’s firm will not abide,

All that limits must needs move.

Stars move within my breast,

Sighs move in heaven nigher,

Each life’s heart, what it loves best

Bruns ecstatically, flares higher.

Every drunkenness is welcome,

Open am I to all pain,

I stream in prayer, I am come

Into the heart of the world again.

Hermann Hesse