The ground keeps moving up and down.
It’s like walking on a beech-wood board.
The water’s sloshing in the ditch.
The turf keeps quaking up and off.
Now it goes down, now it goes up
As gently as a baby’s cradle.

The bog is brown. The heather’s brown.
Cotton grass gleams as white as down,
As soft as silk, as pure as snow.
It goes the stork up to its knees.

Here hops a frog into the reeds
And sings its song when evening comes.
Foxes are skulking. Quails are calling.
The whole world is silent and asleep.

You can’t hear your steps when you walk.
You hear the rushes when you stop.
The whole field is alive and astir
As if by night it were a different world.

That’s when the bog grows so wide and large.
That’s when human beings feel so small.
Who knows how much longer they will walk
So briskly and strongly upon the heath?