Childhood
~ by Rainer Maria Rilke
It would be good to give much thought, before
you try to find words for something so lost,
for those long childhood afternoons you knew
that vanished so completely -and why?
We’re still reminded-: sometimes by a rain,
but we can no longer say what it means;
life was never again so filled with meeting,
with reunion and with passing on
as back then, when nothing happened to us
except what happens to things and creatures:
we lived their world as something human,
and became filled to the brim with figures.
And became as lonely as a shepherd
and as overburdened by vast distances,
and summoned and stirred as from far away,
and slowly, like a long new thread,
introduced into that picture-sequence
where now having to go on bewilders us.
Robert Schumann
Kinderszenen (Scenes From Childhood)
No. 1, Von fremden Ländern und Menschen (Of Foreign Lands and Peoples)
No. 2, Kuriose Geschichte (A Curious Story)
No. 3, Hasche-Mann (Blind Man's Buff)
No. 4, Bittendes Kind (Pleading Child)
No. 5, Glückes genug (Happy Enough)
No. 6, Wichtige Begebenheit (An Important Event)
No. 7, Träumerei (Dreaming)
No. 8, Am Kamin (At the Fireside)
No. 9, Ritter vom Steckenpferd (Knight Of The Hobbyhorse)
No. 10, Fast zu ernst (Almost Too Serious)
No. 11, Fürchtenmachen (Frightening)
No. 12, Kind im Einschlummern (Child Falling Asleep)
No. 13, Der Dichter spricht (The Poet Speaks)
