‘Only one Summer grant, you Powerful Ones,
And one Autumn to my full-ripened song,
That my heart willingly by the tender
Harp-strings be satisfied; let me die, then.
The soul to which its godlike right when alive
Came not, down in Orcus shall find no rest;
But once the holy one that against
My heart lies close, the poem, is uttered,
Welcome, then, O peace of the world of Shades!
Content am I, even if the play of strings
Has not down-guided my footsteps; once
Lived I as gods live, and more I crave not.’
To the Fates, Hölderlin
I
He came, like love, to beseeching strings. Before birth
He had experienced death. He sang in the cradle.
He knew the tenderest fire in eyes declined
Where his mother leaned. Then, racing out in the fields,
True friends he found: the mountains were his companions.
At dusk the rivers returned to the edge of the eyes.
He touched the stars, the wind, the crowns of the reeds.
If he lingered late, he felt the sigh of the dew
Like souls found late upon Lethe. In purest darkness
His eyes shone with tears. He thought of the underworld.
He grew in stature. He felt the arms of the gods
About him. When people spoke, he remained confused.
If he touched a bud, he knew the secrets of nature.
The Rhine, the demi-god, thundered, a Titan in chains.
At evening he would return by a wooded path
To his mother’s house where stories of Greece were stored.
His eyes marvelled, reading the deeds of heroes.
At night, when his book was closed, the curtain stirred,
Pure gold in the rising moon; and he saw the valleys
Transformed with unearthly light. He acclaimed his kindred.
Quite still, he smiled, caught up to the plains of heaven.
‘Holy dawn, the man who is not a hero
Does not see you; therefore you are not honoured,
Beautiful sun-god; therefore your lyre is silent,
Except where pious peoples watch you ascend.
You are too still for the eyes of men; your music
Rises solemn, not knowing trouble or care,
In perfect praise, much brighter than any dream.
I have known and loved you, Aether, better than men.
Late, when moonlight bathed the enchanted fields,
When the last notes of the sun-youth’s lyre had faded
Leaving the listening mountains lost in music,
I have seen them walk, in airs of the gods, those genii,
Patient as stars. My tongue is the tomb of angels.
My words are silence. Orpheus plays to the Shades.’
II
Early, taught by Greece,
He sought the heroic in man. Apollo
Played to him. That gold fleece
Moved on the water; and the host
Of Homer’s heroes moved. A lost
Age compelled him. He must follow,
Source of Promethean fire,
Source of the Danube’s waterfall,
The godlike: great desire,
Glorious Heracles’ feet,
With tiger and vine in thrall
Where the West and Asia meet.
There sprang from ancient silence
Music of gods, the clash on rocks of seas.
He saw those silver islands,
And he heard Mnemosyne’s
Lament for Achilles and Ajax, Ajax dead
In the grotto by the sea-bed.
His eyes beyond Greece beheld
At the end of the poem ‘Bread and Wine’
The torch the Syrian held
Awakening through the divine
Love, that ancient keep
Where the old gods fell asleep.
Late, caught up by a genius,
Borne over streams and dawn’s strange lands,
Their peaks flowering in Asia’s flame,
Seeking John, the witness,
To Patmos, the last island,
He in a vision came.
The lightning held him.
He thought to have seen God’s face in youth
As John beheld Him,
But saw, where ages converged, the sign
Single and forever,
Poured to the dust like wine.
This was the bridal feast
Where Greece, by Christus’ lightning stripped,
With Asia and the East
Met in love’s utmost wish.
And the Baptist’s head in the dish
Shone like unfading script.
All stood at the bridal feast
Changed by the downward-pointing sign.
The deepest joy was released
By the deepest shadow in death.
‘Since Christ, like morning mist
Are the names of the souls of breath.’
III
He saw Dionysus clear from the forge of Vulcan,
Birthplace of wonders, flash of the deathless moment.
For who could train down with such grace the intuitive lightning
To the thunderous chains of his cloud? The courses of rivers
Remained a compelling mystery; yet when he wrote
Of these, he no longer watched, he became the river.
So swift his thought, so close to the life he saw,
He knew the rose as the rose is known to herself,
Fell with the cataract’s fall, or became that eagle
Of piercing sight, or learnt the time of the fig-tree,
Not by time, but by breast-feather and leaf.
IV
Dawn breaks; the sunlight moves like a spirit.
Faint breezes play through arresting leaves. The morning
Moves through the sky. The divine, far-reaching blue ness
Yields to the flight of birds.
Now he should come, the serene, transfiguring hero,
Rocked in light’s cradle, bearing the snake he has killed.
Too dark without him were Earth, and the cloistered greyness
Walled from sunlight and flowers.
What might the gift not bring to their holy light
Who ask love only? Sacrifice willed by the heavenly ones
Raises our god-pierced eyes. Our selves are nothing;
That which we seek is all.
Earth is green, is gay, but is fair no longer.
Wild is the sea, and white: the ships are glorious.
The running river looks for a vanished picture.
Who is at peace, what mortal?
Surely, below, the goddess lives, Diotima.
Did she not lift me, blinded, carried to godhead,
Resting with genius in clouds? The cataract thunders;
But, for the lovers, stillness.
Truth, I have seen her live, here, in the body
Moving; not a far country. No medallion
Of Hellas matched her. Death has fastened her eyelids.
Orphaned is night, is morning.
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