12. Pause

Quite fast

My lute I've hung upon the wall,
I've tied it there with a green band;
I can sing no more, my heart is too full.
I know not how to compel the rhymes,
The hot pain of my yearning
I once could exhale in jesting songs;
And when I complained, so sweet and fine,
I believed my sorrows weren't small.
Ah, but how great is my joy's weight,
That no sound on earth can hold it?

Now, dear lute, rest on this nail here!
And if a breeze flutters over your strings,
And if a bee grazes you with its wings,
It makes me anxious and I shudder through and through.
Oh, why have I left that ribbon hanging there so long?
Often it stirs the strings with a sighing sound.
Is it the echo of my lovelorn pining?
Shall it be the prologue to new songs?

Die schone Mullerin by Wilhelm Muller
music by Franz Schubert Op. 25