The clock’s inexorable strokes,
Night’s agonizing tale!
A language alien equally to all
And clear to everyone like Conscience.
Of us, who could ungrieving heed
Midst universal silence
The hollow groans of Time,
The oracular, the parting voice?
And thus we dream: the orphaned world
By an unswervable Doom was overtaken,
And we, in strife, by all Nature
Have been abandoned to ourselves,
And our life is standing before us,
Like a ghost, on the edge of Earth,
And with our age and friends
Is paling in a distand haze.
And a new, young generation
Has risen under the sun,
And we, my friends, and our time
Have long been oblivion-bound.
(Have long been covered by oblivion)
Only seldom, performing a somber rite
In the midnight hour,
The funereal voice of (the) metal
Occasionally bewails us.