steps

Like ev'ry flower wilts, like youth is fading

and turns to age, so also one's achieving:

Each virtue and each wisdom needs parading

in one's own time, and must not last forever.

The heart must be, at each new call for leaving,

prepared to part and start without the tragic,

without the grief - with courage to endeavor

a novel bond, a disparate connection:

for each beginning bears a special magic

that nurtures living and bestows protection.

 

We'll walk from space to space in glad progression

and should not cling to one as homestead for us.

The cosmic spirit will not bind nor bore us;

it lifts and widens us in ev'ry session:

for hardly set in one of life's expanses

we make it home, and apathy commences.

But only he, who travels and takes chances,

can break the habits' paralyzing stances.

 

It even may be that the last of hours

will make us once again a youthful lover:

The call of life to us forever flowers...

Anon, my heart! Do part and do recover!

~ Hermann Hesse

translated by Walter A. Aue