‘When I was a boy’ by Friedrich Hölderlin

‘When I was a boy’

When I was a boy

A god often rescued me

From the shouts and the rods of men

And I played among trees and flowers

Secure in their kindness

And the breezes of heaven

Were playing there too.

And as you delight

The hearts of plants

When they stretch towards you

With little strength

So you delighted the heart in me

Father Helios, and like Endymion

I was your favourite,

Moon. O all

You friendly

And faithful gods

I wish you could know

How my soul has loved you.

Even though when I called to you then

It was not yet with names, and you

Never named me as people do

As though they knew one another

I knew you better

Than I have ever known them.

I understood the stillness above the sky

But never the words of men.

Trees were my teachers

Melodious trees

And I learned to love

Among flowers.

I grew up in the arms of the gods.

Friedrich Hölderlin, Selected Poems, trans. by David Constantine (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1996), 13.