Funeral Orator

Prayer and Meditation

Dear spring, tell me, for you are a prophet, whether one will one day go to salvation on this path? In the middle of the green grove, impetuous haste, the railway eats you in, a bad guest for you. Trees fall left and right where it breaks forward, the rough does not spare your blooming sex.

The oak tree holding up the pious shield to its enemy, the image of Mary, is also felled. Kiss your last kiss, spring, sweet and warm! Oak and Maria must get out of your arms! Swift as an arrow and dead straight, the carriage soon takes blood and devotion under the wheel, rushing through the forest.

Dear years, I ask you, as he trusts, does man get freedom here? Will a beautiful wreath of joy reward your sacrifices when you shine with the sun's splendor over the free? Or is this word madness, and are we only chasing gold and lust for the senses on our storm path? Does the old chain smith now pull our iron band from country to country, hammering, welding link by link? Does your blessing rush to the train when it snorts by?

Or, springtime, will you sadly shake your head one day? But you smile joyfully at the work of the axe, so that I should rather believe in the way of salvation. Blackbirds and finches cheer so loudly that I prefer to hope.

I was always fond of this lonely hill and the woods that almost all around exclude the view from the distant turmoil of the heavens. Sitting and looking, I picture infinite spaces beyond me and more than human silence and rest from the bottom of rest. And for a little while my heart handles it without fear. When the wind rustles through the bushes,

I am overcome by the idea of comparing this loudness with that endless stillness. The eternal comes to mind and next to it the old seasons and this existing time, the living, sounding one. So the thought sinks away from me into excess. To sink in this sea is to be shipwrecked.