An die Parzen

You powers, just one summer grant me
   and for harvesting songs, one fall
that I by sweet play sated
   may willingly die

The soul if the role it was born for
   is denied, down there rests neither;
but after the poem is completed
   that lies in my hidden heart

--then hello, still of the shadow lands!

I don't mind if my word-work
   doesn't follow me too:
awhile like the gods I lived
   and need no more.

--Friedrich Hölderlin (my tr; 1982)