Brentano’s ‘A Servant’s Springtime Cry from the Deep’

By Scott Horton

1. Master, without your compassion
   
   I must despair in the abyss
   
   Do you not want to carry me
   
   With strong arms back to the light?

2. With each year your goodness
   
   Reaches into the earth and into men’s hearts
   
   With each year you arouse the blooms,
   
   And your arouse in me the old pains.

3. Born but once to the light,
   
   But dead a thousand times,
   
   I am lost without you
   
   Without you I am spoiled in myself.

4. When the earth moves thus,
   
   When the air waves sunnily,
   
   Then the flow is moved as well,
   
   Which stands in a funereal shroud.

5. And in my heart shudders
   
   A sorrowful, bitter fountain
   
   If the springtime lurks outside,
   
   Then a flood of anxieties will run against me.

6. Woe! Through poisonous earthly premises
   
   As time flows into them,
   
   I have sunk the shafts
   
   And he is but weakly condemned.

7. As the springs now swell about us,
   
   As the ground bring forth about us,
   
   The poisonous waves break upon us,
   
   Which compel no curse, no wit.

8. I call to others, swimming, swimming,
   
   But no such call can be good for me,
   
   For in me rises the grim Deluge,
   
   Surging from my eyes.

9. And then they all seemed evil growths
   
   To me, all these bright lambs,
   
   Which I greeted, sweet fruits,
   
   Which ripened to me into bitter bile.

10. Lord, take pity upon me,
    
    Make my heart bloom anew,
    
    No one has taken pity upon me
    
    From the springtimes of the earth.

11. Master, if all hands approach
    
    You with sweet-filled peelings,
    
    Then I will never pay my debt
    
    To you with a bitter donation.

12. Oh, how I rake more deeply,
    
    How I create and wine,
    
    Never shall I flush the torrent
    
    Into the firm and pure foundation of crystal.

13. The walls always collapse upon me,
    
    Every stratum lies to me,
    
    And hands bloodied by work
    
    Burn in the bitter swells.

14. Woe! The space grows tighter,
    
    Wilder and more deserted grow the waves,
    
    Lord, oh lord, I can sustain it no longer,
    
    Strike your rainbow.

15. Lord, I plea to you, spare me,
    
    Lord! I heard it recently said,
    
    Wondrous salvation resides
    
    In your floresence.

16. And so I cry to you,
    
    I cry from the bitterest depths,
    
    Can you not then forgive that
    
    Your servant so audaciously ripens.

17. That the source of light again
    
    Flows pure and holy in me
    
    One drop trickles down
    
    From Jesus, to me, to your bloom!

–Clemens Brentano, Frühlingsschrei eines Knechtes aus der Tiefe in Brentanos Werke, vol. 1, p. 329-335 (Carl Hanser ed. 1968)(S.H. transl.)