Here's yet another translation, from The Poems of Eugene Field (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1919):


DER MANN IM KELLER
Eugene Field

How cool and fair this cellar where
My throne a dusky cask is;
To do no thing but just to sing
And drown the time my task is.
The cooper he's resolved to please,
And, answering to my winking,
He fills me up cup after cup
For drinking, drinking, drinking.

Begrudge me not this cozy spot
In which I am reclining—
Why, who would burst with envious thirst,
When he can live by wining?
A roseate hue seems to imbue
The world on which I 'm blinking;
My fellow-men—I love them when
I 'm drinking, drinking, drinking.

And yet I think, the more I drink,
It's more and more I pine for—
Oh, such as I (forever dry)
God made this land of Rhine for
And there is bliss in knowing this,
As to the floor I'm sinking:
I've wronged no man and never can
While drinking, drinking, drinking.


[It strikes me that this would fit well to the tune "How Can I Keep from Singing?"]