May all souls rest in peace! (Johann Georg Jacobi / Franz Schubert)

May all souls rest in peace;
those whose fearful torment is past;
those whose sweet dreams are over;
those sated with life, those barely born,
who have left this world:
may all souls rest in peace! 

The souls of girls in love,
whose tears are without number,
who, abandoned by a faithless lover,
rejected the blind world.
May all who have departed hence,
may all souls rest in peace! 

And those who never smiled at the sun,
who lay awake beneath the moon on beds of thorns,
so that they might one day see God face to face
in the pure light of heaven:
may all who have departed hence,
may all souls rest in peace! 

--Johann Georg Jacobi

The first stanza of this poem by 18th-century German poet Johann Georg Jacobi, a prayer for the faithful departed, was the origin of the Romantic composer Franz Schubert’s Litanei a uf des Fest Allerseelen, which, in turn, inspired Austrian artist Gustav Klimt’s painting “Schubert at the Piano” (see above). You can listen to Schubert’s beautiful work here: 

Image source: Photograph of Gustav Klimt’s Schubert at the Piano (1898); the original was destroyed by a fire in 1945. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schubert_at_the_Piano
Poem Source
Video source