Farewell – Memorial Service – Funeral Orator – In my youth, I thought with satisfaction that my thinking was free!

Prayer and Meditation

In my youth, when I was still without brooding, I thought with satisfaction that my thinking was free. Since then I have often rested my forehead on my hand and found that there was a hard knot in my brain. My pride grew smaller. I noticed with annoyance: One of us can only think as he must. In my younger days I had fresh courage, in the sun's rays I was strong and good.

Love, waves of life, stars, lust for flowers! How strong the sinews, how full the breast! And what was only a dream is gone. Winter has come bleaching my hair. I've grown so old, old and weak and blind, Ah! life blows away like a foggy wind!

Farewell - Memorial Service

In the autumn night, fireflies buzz on the witch mountain. Through the window curtain they come in, through the window they stray! The zither makes a secret sound, and they are frightened. Like stars they swarm out again around roofs and corners. They fly around the fountain railing, one at a time, in the wet. They get lost in calyxes and make them shine. White-haired old man from far away looks from one to the other.

Will he be home for the rest of the year today or will he still be hiking? How quiet everything is now! It was often like that when I was a child, the brooks rushing down through the twilight solitude. You can hardly hear a shepherd singing. From all the villages, gorges, far away the evening bells ring out. The valleys that flash once more have sunk with joy and sorrow. Only far away behind the quiet forest is the afterglow on the mountain peaks, like the dawn of eternity. All the best on your final journey and rest in peace!