Under the lime tree on the daisied ground
Two that I know of made this bed.
There you may see heaped and scattered round
Grass and blossoms broken and shed
All in a thicket down in the dale;
Tandaradei- sweetly sang the nightingale.
Ere I set foot in the meadow already
Some one was waiting for somebody;
there was a meeting- oh! gracious lady,
there is no pleasure again for me,
thousands of kisses there he took.
Tandaradei- see my lips, how red they look.
Leaf and blossom he had pulled and piled
For a couch, a green one, soft and high;
And many a one hath gazed and smiled
Passing the bower and pressed grass by;
And the roses crushed hath seen,
Tandaradei- where I laid my head between.
In this love passage if any one had been there,
How sad and shamed should I be;
But what were were doing alone among the green there
No soul shall ever know except my love and me,
and the little nightingale,
Tandaradei- she, I wot, will tell no tale.
Walter Von Der Vogelweide Translated from the German by Thomas Lovell
Beddoes
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