| What feelings you must feel, great man,
|
| at the veneration of this crowd!
|
| Happy you who may derive
|
| such great advantage from your learning!
|
| The fathers show you to their sons,
|
| they all ask questions, push and hurry,
|
| the music stops, the dancer pauses.
|
| They stand in rows as you progress;
|
| they wave and fling their caps up in the air
|
1020
| and almost fall upon their knees
|
| as if the Host were passing by.
|
| A few more steps up to that rock,
|
| then let us rest from our wanderings.
|
| Here, deep in thought, I often sat alone
|
| and racked myself with fast and prayer.
|
| Rich in hope, and firm in faith,
|
| with tears and sighs and wringing hands
|
| I sought to wrest from the Lord in Heaven
|
| the means to end the pestilence.
|
1030
| The crowd’s acclaim now sounds like mockery.
|
| Oh, could you read my inmost soul,
|
| you’d find how little son and father
|
| were worthy of the folk’s acclaim.
|
| My father, man of darkling honor,
|
| brooded about Nature’s sacred spheres
|
| in deep sincerity, yet in peculiar fashion,
|
| and with a crank’s obsessive zeal,
|
| within a circle of adepts
|
| ensconced himself in his black kitchen
|
1040
| and sought to fuse two hostile elements, or more,
|
| according to his endless recipes.
|
| A daring wooer called Red Lion
|
| was wedded to the Lily in a tepid bath;
|
| both were exposed to open, searing flames
|
| and driven hapless to another Bridal Chamber.
11
|
| When thereupon in cheerful colors
|
| the youthful Queen shone in her flask:
|
| that was the medication; the patients died,
|
| and no one asked: Did anyone get better?
|
1050
| And so with our hellish potions
|
| we raged about these plains and mountains
|
| and were more deadly than the plague.
|
| I myself administered the poison;
|
| I saw thousands wilt, and now must live to see
|
| how praise is heaped upon the shameless killers.
|
| How can you yield to such depression!
|
| A worthy man can do no more
|
| than execute with care and strict conformity
|
| the art which was bequeathed to him.
|
1060
| If one reveres his father as a youth,
|
| one will accept his teachings eagerly,
|
| and if you gain advances for your science,
|
| your son may yet attain to higher goals.
|
| Oh, happy he who still can hope in our day
|
| to breathe the truth while plunged in seas of error!
|
| What we don’t know is really what we need,
|
| and what we know is of no use to us whatever!
|
| But the radiance of this hour
|
| must not be marred by gloomy thoughts.
|
1070
| Mark the shimmering huts in green surroundings,
|
| basking in the evening sunlight’s glow.
|
| It fades and sinks away; the day is spent,
|
| the sun moves on to nourish other life.
|
| Oh, if I had wings to lift me from this earth,
|
| to seek the sun and follow him!
|
| Then I should see within the constant evening ray
|
| the silent world beneath my feet,
|
| the peaks illumined, and in every valley peace,
|
| the silver brook flow into golden streams.
|
1080
| No savage peaks nor all the roaring gorges
|
| could then impede my godlike course.
|
| Even now the ocean and its sun-warmed bays
|
| appear to my astonished eyes.
|
| When it would seem the sun has faded,
|
| a newborn urge awakes in me.
|
| I hurry off to drink eternal light;
|
| before me lies the day, behind the night,
|
| the sky above me, and the seas below.
|
| A lovely dream; meanwhile the sun has slipped away.
|
1090
| Alas, the spirit’s wings will not be joined
|
| so easily to heavier wings of flesh and blood.
|
| Yet every man has inward longings
|
| and sweeping, skyward aspirations
|
| when up above, forlorn in azure space,
|
| the lark sends out a lusty melody;
|
| when over jagged mountains, soaring over pines,
|
| the outstretched eagle draws his circles,
|
| and high above the plains and oceans
|
| the cranes press onward, homeward bound.
|
1100
| I’ve had myself at times peculiar notions,
|
| but never have I felt an urge like that.
|
| One quickly has one’s fill of woods and meadows,
|
| and I shall never envy birds their wings.
|
| How differently the spirit’s higher pleasures
|
| buoy us up through many books and pages!
|
| Those wintry nights hold charm and beauty,
|
| a blessed life warms every limb,
|
| and ah! when we unroll a precious parchment,
|
| the very skies come down to us.
|
1110
| You’re conscious only of a single drive;
|
| oh, do not seek to know the other passion!
|
| Two souls, alas, dwell in my breast,
|
| each seeks to rule without the other.
|
| The one with robust love’s desires
|
| clings to the world with all its might,
|
| the other fiercely rises from the dust
|
| to reach sublime ancestral regions.
|
| Oh, should there be spirits roaming through the air
|
| which rule between the earth and heaven,
|
1120
| let them leave their golden haze and come to me,
|
| let them escort me to a new and bright-hued life!
|
| Ah yes, if I could have a magic cloak
|
| to whisk me off to foreign lands
|
| I should not trade it for the richest robes,
|
| nor for the mantle of a king.
|
| Do not invoke the well-known troop
|
| that floats and streams in murky spheres,
|
| a source of myriad dangers for all men,
|
| issuing from every corner of the globe.
|
1130
| The sharp-toothed ghosts come from the north
|
| and chill you with their arrow-pointed tongues;
|
| they move up, dry as bone, from eastern skies
|
| and suck in moisture from your lungs.
|
| Those churning up from southern desert sands
|
| heap fire upon fire on your skull,
|
| while western gusts will quench your thirst,
|
| then drown you and your fertile fields.
|
| They listen gladly and are glad to do you harm
|
| and readily obey because they like to cheat;
|
1140
| they pretend to come to you from Heaven
|
| and lisp like angels when they lie to you.
|
| But let us leave. The world is turning gray,
|
| the air grows chill and mists are seeping down!
|
| We come to prize our home at night—
|
| Why do you stop short and look so startled?
|
| What arrests you in this fading light?
|
| Behind me, all the fields and meadows
|
| lie wrapped in shade and deepest night;
|
1180
| a holy and foreboding shudder
|
| wakes the better soul in us.
|
| The rush of turbulent desire sleeps,
|
| and every hint of stressful action.
|
| The love of mankind is astir,
|
| the love of God is all about us.
|
