By Anton Wilhelm Florentin von Zuccalmaglio (1803-1869)
There in the willows stands a house,
and there a maiden looks out of the window!
She gazes upstream, she gazes downstream:
is not my heart's beloved boy there yet?
The handsomest lad on the entire Rhine
I call mine, mine!
In the mornings he sails on the river
and sings to me his greeting;
in the evenings, when the glow-worms fly about,
his skiff rocks by the bank
and then I can be with my sweetheart,
together, together!
The nightingale in the lilac bush -
what she sings there, I understand:
she says that next year there will be a celebration,
and I too, my love, will have a nest,
where, with my dear sweetheart, I will be then
the happiest girl on the Rhine, the happiest girl on the Rhine!
..
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1869