Do they return me the tender pressure and the caressing word? Was it thou didst bedeck them with colours and a flickering outline? Or was it she who gave to thy jewels a higher, a dearer significance? What delight, what pleasure offers thy life, to outweigh the transports of Death? Wears not everything that inspirits us the livery of the Night? Thy mother, it is she who brings thee forth, and to her thou owest all thy glory. Thou wouldst vanish into thyself, thou wouldst dissipate in boundless space, if she did not hold thee fast, if she swaddled thee not, so that thou grewest warm, and, flaming, gavest birth to the universe. Verily I was before thou wast; the mother sent me with my sisters to inhabit thy world, to sanctify it with love that it might be an ever present memorial, to plant it with flowers unfading. As yet they have not ripened, these thoughts divine; as yet is there small trace of our coming apocalypse. One day thy clock will point to the end of Time, and then thou shalt be as one of us, and shalt, full of ardent longing, be extinguished and die. I feel in me the close of thy activity, I taste heavenly freedom, and happy restoration. With wild pangs I recognize thy distance from our home, thy feud with the ancient lordly Heaven. Thy rage and thy raving are in vain. Inconsumable stands the cross, victory-flag of our race.
Over I pilgrim
Where every pain
Zest only of pleasure
Shall one day remain.
Yet a few moments
Then free am I,
And intoxicated
In Love’s lap lie.
Life everlasting
Lifts, wave-like, at me:
I gaze from its summit
Down after thee.
Oh Sun, thou must vanish
Yon hillock beneath;
A shadow will bring thee
Thy cooling wreath.
Oh draw at my heart, love,
Draw till I’m gone;
That, fallen asleep, I
Still may love on!
I feel the flow of
Death’s youth-giving flood;
To balsam and aether, it
Changes my blood!
I live all the daytime
In faith and in might:
In holy rapture
I die every night.
V.
In ancient times an iron Fate lorded it, with dumb force, over the widespread families of men. A gloomy oppression swathed their anxious souls: the Earth was boundless, the abode of the gods and their home. From eternal ages stood its mysterious structure. Beyond the red hills of the morning, in the sacred bosom of the sea, dwelt the sun, the all-enkindling, live luminary. An aged giant upbore the happy world. Prisoned beneath mountains lay the first-born sons of mother Earth, helpless in their destroying fury against the new, glorious race of gods, and their kindred, glad-hearted men. Ocean’s dusky, green abyss was the lap of a goddess. In the crystal grottoes revelled a wanton folk. Rivers, trees, flowers, and beasts had human wits. Sweeter tasted the wine, poured out by youth impersonated; a god was in the grape-clusters; a loving, motherly goddess upgrew in the full golden sheaves; love’s sacred carousal was a sweet worship of the fairest of the goddesses. Life revelled through the centuries like one spring-time, an ever-variegated festival of the children of heaven and the dwellers on the earth. All races childlike adored the ethereal, thousandfold flame, as the one sublimest thing in the world.
It was but a fancy, a horrible dream-shape—
That fearsome to the merry tables strode,
And wrapt the spirit in wild consternation.
The gods themselves here counsel knew nor showed
To fill the stifling heart with consolation.
Mysterious was the monster’s pathless road,
Whoose rage would heed no prayer and no oblation;
Twas Death who broke the banquet up with fears,
With anguish, with dire pain, and bitter tears.
Eternally from all things here disparted
That sway the heart with pleasure’s joyous flow,
Divided from the loved, whom, broken-hearted,
Vain longing tosses and unceasing woe—
In a dull dream to struggle, faint and thwarted,
Smeemed all was granted to the dead below!
Broke lay the merry wave of human glory
On Death’s inevitable promontory.
With daring flight, aloft Thought’s pinions sweep;
The horrid thing with beauty’s robe men cover:
A gentle youth puts out his torch, to sleep;
Sweet comes the end, like moaning lute of lover.
Cool shadow-floods o’er melting memory creep:
So sang the song, for Misery was the mover.
Still undeciphered lay the endless Night—
The solemn symbol of a far-off Might.
The old world began to decline. The pleasure-garden of the young race withered away; up into opener regions and desolate, forsaking his childhood, struggled the growing man. The gods vanished with their retinue. Nature stood alone and lifeless. Dry Number and rigid Measure bound her with iron chains. As into dust and air the priceless blossoms of life fell away in words obscure. Gone was wonder-working Faith, and the all-transforming, all-uniting angel-comrade, the Imagination. A cold north wind blew unkindly over the torpid plain, and the wonderland first froze, then evaporated into aether. The far depths of heaven filled with flashing worlds. Into the deeper sanctuary, into the more exalted region of the mind, the soul of the world retired with all her powers, there to rule until the dawn should break of the glory universal. No longer was the Light the abode of the gods, and the heavenly token of their presence: they cast over them the veil of the Night. The Night became the mighty womb of revelations; into it the gods went back, and fell asleep, to go abroad in new and more glorious shapes over the transfigured world. Among the people which, untimely ripe, was become of all the most scornful and insolently hostile to the blessed innocence of youth, appeared the New World, in guise never seen before, in the song-favouring hut of poverty, a son of the first maid and mother, the eternal fruit of mysterious embrace. The forseeing, rich-blossoming wisdom of the East at once recognized the beginning of the new age; a star showed it the way to the lowly cradle of the king. In the name of the far-reaching future, they did him homage with lustre ond odour, the highest wonders of Nature. In solitude the heavenly heart unfolded itself to a flower-chalice of almighty love, upturned to the supreme face of the father, and resting on the bliss-boding bosom of the sweetly solemn mother. With deifying fervour the prophetic eye of the blooming child beheld the years to come, foresaw, untroubled over the earthly lot of his own days, the beloved offspring of his divine stem. Ere long the most childlike souls, by true love marvellously possessed, gathered about him. Like flowers sprang up a new strange life in his presence. Words inexhaustible and tidings the most joyful fell like sparks of a divine spirit from his friendly lips. From a far shore came a singer, born under the clear sky of Hellas, to Palestine, and gave up his whole heart to the marvellous child:—
The youth art thou who ages long hast stood
Upon our graves, lost in a maze of weening;
Sign in the darkness of God’s tidings good,
Whence hints of growth humanity is gleaning;
For that we long, on that we sweetly brood