It's the shimmer in the clouds and the sparkle in the sea,
It's the light over the shores and the headland
and around me stands the glorious forests so green
behind the swaying grass of meadows.
And with summer and beauty and sound of wind in the forests
is my homeland and it greets me happily,
greeted me happily! But where is my father's farm,
it is empty behind the row of maples.
It is empty, it is burnt, it is ravaged and cold
where it lay the rock-face is bare,
but above it went the memory with the wind so cool
and the memory is all that is left
And it is I who saw a gable stand white
and a window stand open in it,
that a piano sounded and a cheerful piece
of a song with an elegant melody
And it was what should be my father's voice,
when he was still happy and young
before the song became silent in his dying chest
and his life became sad and burdensome
It is empty, it is burnt, I want to lie down
near the sea in order to hear him speak
about the old days that have gone as the time passed
about the old days in the Alstern valley.
And he gives a sad and murmuring reply
but so weakly that it seemed like a dream[?]:
"It was thrown to the wind twenty years ago,
it is dead and buried and forgotten.
There you, dear creature and my sight,
there stands the emptiness, desolate and bare,
and my eternal lullaby is all that's still left
of the old days in the Alstern valley."