Transitoriness

Out of the tree of life there drops

Me leaf on leaf.

O world of giddy eyeprops,

How you fill with grief,

How fill with grief and doze,

How you make us drunk!

What today yet glows,

Is all too early sunk.

Early the wind is piled

Over my earthen mound,

Over the little child

Bows the mother down.

I would see her eyes again,

Her look is my star,

The rest may all go and be gone,

All die the death, glad far.

Only the mother eternal abides,

From whom we came,

Her playful finger indites

In fleeting air our name.

Hermann Hesse