"To My Little Bee"

by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs

Little bee, you flew with me when I went
wandering southward over the
Alps
With a light heart, into Italy's pastures.
You buzzed
Around me when the keel, gliding over the seas,
Divided the bluish streams shadowed by the
cliffs at Riva.
It took its course that way, where into the sea
Sirmio stretches out its oddly narrow reef
covered with olive trees.
Up to the caves of Catullo on the other end of
the tongue,
Where, as the eye perceives northward, the
charming backward view is,
You followed me into the sylvan glade, and I
listened to the coarse grasshoppers
Chirping out their song hiding in the trees.
Then
You flew with me into the city where at one time
East Rome's archons carried
The scepter, and to the cellar which Amalasunta
arched up as a grave for her father,
Which she crowned with an Istrian boulder, whose
foundation gradually sank into the soft earth;
Also into the small chapel, the vault with
coffins of marble,
Into whose sinking monument I entered, removing
my hat,
Grieving. How still the room is! There I stood at
the
Coffin -- therein rests Placidia, still a shield of
late Roman honor,
Which stands up against the ruin, because the
walls shook
And because column after column has crashed upon
the building.
You were with me in the south on the ridge of the
Pertosa Pietra,
Whose divide proudly stretches up to the heavens,
While the river suddenly falls vertically into
the Basento stream
Which pours into the gulf, to soak the dolphins
In the flowing waters;
You were on the stone ledge on the other shore of
the river,