Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings. - Heinrich Heine

Buch Der Lieder: Lyrisches Intermezzo: ‘Es liegt der heisse Sommer’

There lies the heat of summer

On your cheek’s lovely art:

There lies the cold of winter

Within your little heart.

That will change, beloved,

The end not as the start!

Winter on your cheek then,

Summer in your heart.

Nature knows no indecencies; man invents them.

Still is the night, it quiets the streets down,
In that window my love would appear;
She's long since gone away from this town,
But this house where she lived still remains here.

A man stands here too, staring up into space,
And wrings his hands with the strength of his pain:
It chills me, when I behold his pale face
For the moon shows me my own features again!

You spirit double, you specter with my face
Why do you mock my love-pain so
That tortured me here, here in this place
So many nights, so long ago?