Written by Mermaid Seraphine
The sea is a symbol of mystery and adventure. It is also a symbol of the unknown, of the infinite. The sea can be calm or stormy, it can be welcoming or dangerous. As such, it has been a source of inspiration for many poets and writers.
Heinrich Heine, one of the most famous German poets and writers, was one of them. He wrote about the sea in his poems “Sunset” “Twilight” “Night on the Shore”, “Storm” and “Calm.” These poems make part of his anthology titled “Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine.” Read on!
“Sunset” (poem by Heinrich Heine)
The glowing red sun descends
Into the wide, tremulous
Silver-gray ocean.
Ethereal, rosy tinted forms
Are wreathed behind him, and opposite,
Through the veil of autumnal, twilight clouds,
Like a sad, deathly-pale countenance,
Breaks the moon,
And after her, like sparks of light,
In the misty distance, shimmer the stars.
Once there shone forth in heaven,
Nuptially united.
Luna the goddess, and Sol the god.
And around them gathered the stars,
Those innocent little children.
But evil tongues whispered dissension,
And in bitterness parted
The lofty, illustrious pair.
Now all day in lonely splendor
The sun-god fares overhead,
Worshiped and magnified in song,
For the excellence of his glory,
By haughty prosperity—hardened men.
But at night
In heaven wandereth Luna,
The poor mother,
With her orphaned, starry children;
And she shines with a quiet sadness,
And loving maidens and gentle poets
Dedicate to her their tears and their songs
Poor weak Luna! Womanly-natured,
Still doth she love her beautiful consort.
Towards evening pale and trembling,
She peers forth from light clouds,
And sadly gazes after the departing one,
And in her anguish fain would call to him, “Come!
Come! our children are pining for thee!”
But the scornful sun-god,
At the mere sight of his spouse,
Glows in doubly-dyed purple,
With wrath and grief,
And implacably he hastens downward
To the cold waves of his widowed couch.
Thus did evil-whispering tongues
Bring grief and ruin
Even upon the immortal gods.
And the poor gods in heaven above
Painfully wander
Disconsolate on their eternal path,
And cannot die;
And drag with them
The chain of their glittering misery.
But I, the son of man,
The lowly-born, the death-crowned one,
I murmur no more.
“Twilight” (poem by Heinrich Heine)
On the wan shore of the sea
Lonely I sat with troubled thoughts.
The sun dropped lower, and cast
Glowing red streaks on the water.
And the white wide waves,
Crowding in with the tide,
Foamed and rustled, nearer and nearer,
With a strange rustling, a whispering, a hissing,
A laughter, a murmur, a sighing, a seething,
And amidst all these a mysterious lullaby.
I seemed to hear long-past traditions,
Lovely old-time fairy-tales,
Which as a boy I had heard,
From the neighbor’s children,
When on summer evenings we had nestled
On the stone steps of the porch.
With little eager hearts,
And wistful cunning eyes,
Whilst the grown maidens
Sat opposite at their windows
Near their sweet-smelling flower pots,
With their rosy faces,
Smiling and beaming in the moonlight.
“Night on the Shore” (poem by Heinrich Heine)
Starless and cold is the night,
The sea yawns;
And outstretched flat on his paunch, over the sea,
Lies the uncouth North-wind.
Secretly with a groaning, stifled voice,
Like a peevish, crabbed man in a freak of good humor,
He babbles to the ocean,
And recounts many a mad tale,
Stories of murderous giants,
Quaint old Norwegian Sagas,
And from time to time, with re-echoing laughter,
He howls forth
The conjuration-songs of the Edda,
With Runic proverbs
So mysteriously arrogant, so magically powerful,
That the white children of the sea
High in the air upspring and rejoice,
Intoxicated with insolence.
Meanwhile on the level beach,
Over the wave-wetted sand,
Strides a stranger whose heart
Is still wilder than wind or wave.
Where his feet fall
Sparks are scattered and shells are cracked.
And he wraps himself closer in his gray mantle,
And walks rapidly through the windy night,
Surely guided by a little light,
That kindly and invitingly beams
From the lonely fisherman’s hut.
Father and brother are on the sea,
And quite alone in the hut
Bides the fisher’s daughter,
The fisher’s rarely-beautiful daughter.
She sits on the hearth,
And listens to the cosy auspicious hum
Of the boiling kettle,
And lays crackling fagots upon the fire.
And blows thereon,
Till the flickering red flames
With a magic charm are reflected
On her blooming face.
On her delicate white shoulders
Which so pathetically outpeep
From the coarse gray smock,
And on her little tidy hand
Which gathers more closely the petticoat
About her dainty loins.
But suddenly the door springs wide,
And in steps the nocturnal stranger
His eyes rest with confident love
On the slim, white maiden,
Who stands trembling before him,
Like a frightened lily.
And he flings his mantle to the ground
And laughs and speaks.
“Thou see’st my child! I keep my word.
And I come, and with me, comes
The olden time when the gods of heaven
Descended to the daughters of men,
And embraced the daughters of men,
And begot with them
A race of sceptre-bearing kings,
And heroes, the wonder of the world.
But thou my child, no longer stand amazed
At my divinity.
And I beseech thee, boil me some tea with rum,
For it is cold out doors,
And in such a night-air as this,
Even we, the eternal gods, must freeze.
And we easily catch a divine catarrh,
And an immortal cough.”
“Storm” (poem by Heinrich Heine)
The tempest is raging.
It lashes the waves,
And the waves foaming and rearing in wrath
Tower on high, and the white mountains of water
Surge as though they were alive,
While the little ship over-climbs them
With laborious haste,
And suddenly plunges down
Into the black, wide-yawning abyss of the tide.
O sea.
Thou mother of beauty, of the foam-engendered one,
Grandmother of love, spare me!
Already scenting death, flutters around me
The white, ghostly sea-mew,
And whets his beak on the mast.
And hungers with glutton-greed for the heart
Which resounds with the glory of thy daughter,
And which the little rogue, thy grandson,
Hath chosen for his play-ground.
In vain are my prayers and entreaties,
My cry dies away in the rushing storm,
In the battle-tumult of the winds.
They roar and whistle and crackle and howl
Like a bedlam of tones.
And amidst them, distinctly I hear
Alluring notes of harps,
Heart-melting, heart-rending,
And I recognize the voice.
Far away on the rocky Scotch coast,
Where the little gray castle juts out
Over the breaking waves,—
There at the lofty-arched window
Stands a beautiful suffering woman,
Transparently delicate, and pale as marble.
And she plays on the harp, and she sings,
And the wind stirs her flowing locks,
And wafts her melancholy song
Over the wide, stormy sea.
“Calm” (poem by Heinrich Heine)
Calm at sea! The sunbeams flicker
Falling on the level water,
And athwart the liquid jewels
Ploughs the ship her emerald furrows.
By the rudder lies the pilot
On his stomach, gently snoring,
Near the mast, the tarry ship-boy
Stoops at work, the sail repairing.
‘Neath their smut his cheeks are ruddy,
Hotly flushed,—his broad mouth twitches.
Full of sadness are the glances
Of his eyes so large and lovely.
For the captain stands before him,
Raves and scolds and curses: “Rascal!
Little rascal, thou hast robbed me
Of a herring from the barrel.”
Calm at sea! above the water
comes a cunning fish out-peeping.
Warms his little head in sunshine,
Merrily his small fins plashing.
But from airy heights, the sea-mew
On the little fish darts downward.
Carrying in his beak his booty
Back he soars into the azure.
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