O HAPPY feelings coming from outside,
You have so deeply driven into my soul,
You give me the illusion
Of that interior joy
Which wells out of the source within itself.

O happy feelings coming from afar,
You have so wholly lost your memory
That I am simply joyous
Without considering the reasons thereof.

O happy feelings I have used,
Resume your course,
Bear otherwhere your salutation,
Torch that must still endure a little while.
Go, and in other places kindle fires,
My breath is powerful, I shall do the rest.
Go and burn elsewhere, I await it as a signal.
* * * * * *
O joy! art thou so young and natural,
That thy sole hope, or memory,
Or sight of thee in others hides
The highest reasons to be suffering!

Joy! art thou so tenacious and so keen
That even cut down and taken from thy soil
Thou yet canst bloom, disdainful,
And far from all exiled subsist?
- O green laugh of an island on the sea.

O Joy! like greater grief
Thou fillest the frame and drivest sleep away.
Thou hast seemed to me like a divine possession,
And I shall not be always fit for thee.

I ask, coward as I am, a little pain,
A grief to trail, as men trail their sick foot,
A grief to bear, like mourning for a time,
I crave a sore upon my flank
Through which to bleed, like overflowing health,
All the excess of joy I can no more contain.

translated by Jethro Bithell