Shepherd's song of lament
(Poet's title: Schäfers Klagelied)
Set by Schubert:
D 121
[November 30, 1814]
Part of Goethe: The April 1816 collection sent to Goethe
Da droben auf jenem Berge
Da steh’ ich tausendmal,
An meinem Stabe hingebogen
Und schaue hinab in das Tal.
Dann folg ich der weidenden Herde,
Mein Hündchen bewahret mir sie.
Ich bin herunter gekommen
Und weiß doch selber nicht wie.
Da stehet von schönen Blumen
Die ganze Wiese so voll,
Ich breche sie, ohne zu wissen,
Wem ich sie geben soll.
Und Regen, Sturm und Gewitter
Verpass ich unter dem Baum.
Die Türe dort bleibet verschlossen;
Doch alles ist leider ein Traum.
Es stehet ein Regenbogen
Wohl über jenem Haus!
Sie aber ist fortgezogen,
Und weit in das Land hinaus.
Hinaus in das Land und weiter,
Vielleicht gar über die See.
Vorüber, ihr Schafe, nur vorüber,
Dem Schäfer ist gar so weh.
Up there on that mountain,
I have stood there a thousand times,
Bent over my shepherd’s crook,
Looking down into the valley.
Then I follow the grazing flock.
My little dog watches over them for me.
I have come down here
But I don’t even know myself how I got here.
Over there are all those beautiful flowers
Filling up the whole meadow.
I pick them without even knowing
Who I should give them to.
And rain, storm and thunder
Pass me by here under this tree.
That door there is still closed,
But everything, I’m afraid, is just a dream.
There is a rainbow
No doubt about it, over that house!
But now she has moved away
And gone far off into the countryside.
Out into the countryside, and further,
Perhaps even over the sea.
Move on, you sheep, just pass over.
This shepherd is really in pain.
All translations into English that appear on this website, unless otherwise stated, are by Malcolm Wren. You are free to use them on condition that you acknowledge Malcolm Wren as the translator and schubertsong.uk as the source. Unless otherwise stated, the comments and essays that appear after the texts and translations are by Malcolm Wren and are © Copyright.
☙
Themes and images in this text:
Dogs Doors and gates Dreams Emptiness and fullness Fields and meadows Flowers Here and there High, low and deep Hills and mountains Houses Laments, elegies and mourning Near and far Not moving Rain Rainbows The sea Shepherds Songs (general) Storms Thunder and lightning Trees (general) Valleys Walking and wandering Walking sticks (Wanderstab) Workers and working songs
This shepherd is in real pain. This is no pastoral idyll, in which a life spent in the open air following the flocks is portrayed to jaded urbanites as carefree and a model for simple, ‘authentic’ living. Goethe uses the classical pastoral tradition to confound our expectations and create sympathy for a stock character, yet he also manages to avoid romantic cliche at the same time. The winds and storms are not an outward sign of the shepherd’s inner life (the ‘pathetic fallacy’); quite the opposite, the shepherd simply stays under a tree and is indifferent to them. The only image that links his inner distress to his outward environment is that of the rainbow, with its fugitive hope.
Like so much in this poem, the rainbow is ‘up there’ or ‘over there’. It can never be here, because of the fundamental discrepancy between ‘this’ and ‘that’. We can never reach the foot of any rainbow, and the rainbow at the end of this text recedes as the shepherd becomes aware of it. ‘There’ cannot be ‘here’. It is rather like the shepherd’s memory of standing so many times ‘up there’ on ‘that’ hill and then suddenly realising that he is now ‘down here’ and has no memory of the intervening journey.
It is over. It has passed him by. It has passed. It is in the past. There seem to be hints of all these meanings in the shepherd’s final instruction to the sheep: “Vorüber, ihr Schafe, nur vorüber!” On the banal, physical level, this is an instruction to go ‘over there’, possibly ‘over’ the sea in pursuit of what has gone or what, like the rainbow, is forever unattainable. But it is not the sheep that he is talking to or about. He is counting his lost hopes.
☙
Original Spelling and notes on the text Schäfers Klagelied Da droben auf jenem Berge Da steh' ich tausendmal, An meinem Stabe hingebogen1 Und schaue hinab in das Thal. Dann folg' ich der weidenden Herde, Mein Hündchen bewahret mir sie. Ich bin herunter gekommen Und weiß doch selber nicht wie. Da stehet von schönen Blumen Die ganze Wiese so voll. Ich breche sie, ohne zu wissen, Wem ich sie geben soll. Und Regen, Sturm und Gewitter Verpass' ich unter dem Baum. Die Thüre dort bleibet verschlossen; Doch alles ist leider ein Traum. Es stehet ein Regenbogen Wohl über jenem Haus! Sie aber ist fortgezogen2, Und weit in das Land hinaus. Hinaus in das Land und weiter, Vielleicht gar über die See. Vorüber, ihr Schafe, nur3 vorüber! Dem Schäfer ist gar so weh. 1 Schubert changed 'gebogen' (leaning on my staff) to 'hingebogen' (bent over my staff) 2 Schubert changed 'weggezogen' to 'fortgezogen' (no essential change of meaning) 3 Schubert inserted 'nur' (just) here
Confirmed by Peter Rastl with Schubert’s source, Goethe’s sämmtliche Schriften. Siebenter Band. / Gedichte von Goethe. Erster Theil. Lyrische Gedichte. Wien, 1810. Verlegt bey Anton Strauß. In Commission bey Geistinger. page 75; with Goethe’s Werke, Vollständige Ausgabe letzter Hand, Erster Band, Stuttgart und Tübingen, in der J.G.Cottaschen Buchhandlung, 1827, pages 94-95, and with Taschenbuch auf das Jahr 1804, Herausgegeben von Wieland und Goethe, Tübingen, in der Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, pages 113-114.
To see an early edition of the text, go to page 75 [89 von 418] here: http://digital.onb.ac.at/OnbViewer/viewer.faces?doc=ABO_%2BZ163965701