caesura

Description

Steps

As every blossom wilts and every youth
Yields to age, so blooms every step of life,
So too blooms every wisdom and every virtue
In its time and may not last forever.
The heart must at all of life’s calls
Be ready to part and begin anew,
So that it may, with courage and without grief,
Give itself to new engagements.
In every beginning lives a magic,
Protecting us and helping us to live.

Lithely and cheerfully should we stride from room to room,
On none hang like we would a home,
The spirit of the world wants not to fetter or restrict us,
Rather to lift us step by step, to expand us.
We barely arrive in a phase of life
And already complacency threatens.
Only he who is ready to break off and travel
May break from crippling habituation.

Perhaps even the hour of death
Will dispatch to us fresh and new,
Life’s call to us will never end…
Well then, my heart, be and fare well!

Hermann Hesse, 1877-1962