There was a Land

There was a Land

- where the wind blows cold over empty land ...

Written and read

by 

Agnes Miegel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=au5wsjtHWRc

(Born 1879 in Königsberg, Prussia; died 1964)

(& damn good looking she was as well, if I may say so, old chap!)

Shortened and set to Pink Floyd's
"Shine On You Crazy Diamond Pt I"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UXircX3VdM

By someone I don't know, salvaged, damaged, from a cassette deck and repaired:

Agnes Miegel

There was a Land [Es war ein Land] (MP3)

Enjoy, or recoil, as you will.

There was a Land

Oh, ashes fly sooner than dust and sand

And nettles grow high on burst, broken walls

But higher still thistles on the edge of the land.

There was a land - where are you, time?

Where rye fields billowed as far as the sea

And thrush nightingales sang from the alder tree

When herd and foal went to water.

Farm up, farm down, like a gentle heart rang

The tapping of scythes in the light of the night

And barge upon barge lay still on the river

And safely slept both cathedral and borough

In the brightest of night - the midsummer night.

There was a land - in the evening glow

Sheaf upon sheaf stood in a row

Up hill, down hill to the megalith grave

Haystacks stood high, scenting of bread

And, high above, the storks circles drew.

So blue was the sea, and the beach was so white

And poppy-red the moon on the edge of the wood

In the warm of the night - the harvest night.

There was a land - the fog, when it flew

Like cobwebs around the junipers drew

The birches shone in white and in gold

And coral the umbels of rowanberry.

As acorns crunched beneath our feet

In the hardened furrows of the street

A star blinked at me, far and alone

And in the forest, you would hear the stag roar

In the cold of the night - the September night.

There was a land - when the east wind whistled

It lay as still as a ship trapped in ice

And snow covered the crops like a down

Obscuring the elks' clandestine trail.

As the sea froze gray on icy groyne

The lagoon's fishers and fish met at the hole

And under a warm roof of straw and reed

The loom clattered to an ancient song:

'We both are still young and strong,

We live by the work of our hands.'

There was a land - we loved this land

But horror descended like desert sand

Gone from the fen like the moose's trail

Are the traces of man, and of creature.

They froze in the snow; they burned in the fire;

They perished in torment in foe's territory;

They lie deep on the grounds of the Baltic Sea;

Tide washes their bones in sound and in bay;

As they sleep in Jutland's powdery womb.

And we last ones are drifting, abandoned;

Wrack after storm; autumn leaves in the wind;

Father, you know how lonely we are!

There was a Land [Es war ein Land] (MP3)