Early Works of Karl Marx: Book of Verse

The Awakening

I

When your beaming eye breaks
Enraptured and trembling,
Like straying string music
That brooded, that slumbered,
Bound to the lyre,
Up through the veil
Of holiest night,
Then from above glitter
Eternal stars
Lovingly inwards.

II

Trembling, you sink
With heaving breast,
You see unending
Eternal worlds
Above you, below you,
Unattainable, endless,
Floating in dance-trains
Of restless eternity;
An atom, you fall
Through the Universe.

III

Your awakening
Is an endless rising,
Your rising
An endless falling.

IV

When the rippling flame
Of your soul strikes
In its own depths,
Back into the breast,
There emerges unbounded,
Uplifted by spirits,
Borne by sweet-swelling
Magical tones,
The secret of soul
Rising out of the soul's
Daemonic abyss.

V

Your sinking down
Is an endless rising,
Your endless rising
Is with trembling lips-
The Aether-reddened,
Flaming, eternal
Lovekiss of the Godhead.