“When music becomes the food of love,
Play on, and feed it to the soul!
May the surfeited thirst for sounds
With excess wither and fall silent.
Once more that melody! It seems frozen!
It has entranced the ear like a gentle wind,
That, flying over violets,
Now carries off, now brings back their fragrance.
Enough — stop! No, now
It no longer delights the ear as before.
O spirit of love, how fresh and weightless you are!
Like the ocean, you contain everything;
But all that falls into your depths—
However important and weighty it may be—
At once loses both its heaviness and its value.
Love is so full of dreams and visions
That, truly, love is nothing but a dream…"