Twining Eternally

"Eons cannot erase the traces of my days on Earth."  — Goethe

"Eleusis" by Hegel

To Hölderlin

Peace, all around me and within! The tireless cares

Slumber, of busy men. They give to me

Leisure and liberty. Oh night, I thank thee, thou

That set'st me free! With shimmering haze of white

The uncertain confines of the distant hills

Are shrouded by the moon; and, from between,

With kindly twinkle glitters one bright strip

Of yonder lake.

The tedious clatter of the day recedes,

As memory had laid long years between.

Thy image, now, beloved, rises up

With joys of bygone days. Yet soon these yield

To sweeter hopes of new and speedy meeting:

I paint the scene already — the eager step,

The warm embrace: and that, more intimate,

When each probes each with questions, to espy

What new things time has wrought within his friend

Of feeling, view and utt'rance; the glad certitude

That the old covenant maintains its faith,

Even truer, firmer, riper than before;

That covenant, not sealed by any oath:

To live unto free truth alone;

And never, never to make truce

With that convention which would regulate

The feelings and opinions.

Now must the thought, that bore me once o'er streams and mountain heights

To you on wings, confer with dull reality.

Yet soon a sigh betrays their quarreling, and with it flees

Away the dream of sweet imaginings.

My eyes are lifted to the vault of the eternal heavens,

To ye, ye radiant, starry host of height;

And, every hope and every wish effacing,

Forgetfulness rains down from your eternity.

My mind doth lose itself in gazing:

Gone is what I called mine:

I yield myself to the immeasurable;

I am in him, am All, am nothing else.

Returning thought, in fearsome alienation,

Recoils before the infinite, and fails, astounded,

To fathom such a vision's depths.

But fancy to the mind draws down the eternal,

And marries it to form. All hail to you!

Exalted spirits! Lofty shadows!

From whose clear brows fulfillment radiates.

Be not afraid!

This dazzling brightness that enwraps you round;

I feel I too have here my home.

Ha! Did the gates start of thy sanctuary,

Ceres? Oh, thou who in Eleusis throned'st!

Enthused, intoxicate, I feel

Thy awesome presence near

Would comprehend thy revelations.

Would read the symbols' lofty purport, and o'erhear

The festal choirs of the gods,

The dooms they utter from their council-seats!

But silenced are thy halls today, oh Goddess!

Fled is the conclave of the gods to high Olympus,

Far from their profanated altar-places;

Spurning the grave of desecrate mankind,

Fled is that genius of innocency

Whose spell once lured them: mute the wisdom of thy priests.

No single note of all the sacred rite

Escaped to reach us; and in vain the searchers delve,

Moved more by curiosity than love

For wisdom. Her they possess indeed! Disdaining thee.

In hopes to master her, they burrow after words

To find the imprint of thy lofty mind.

Tis vain! They grasp but a handful of dust and ashes,

To which they nevermore shall conjure back thy life!

Yet in the rotting, soulless mould they take their pleasure,

Aye dead themselves, and with the dead content!

Of thy high banquets there remains no token;

Of all the pictured forms not any fleeting trace.

Too holy for the children of thy mysteries

The depths of that unutterable feeling,

The rich contents of that exalted lore,

To be entrusted to a barren symbol.

Even thought itself can compass not the soul,

Who, beyond time and space, aspectant of infinity,

Rapt, self-oblivious, back to consciousness once more

Awakes. And, would he tell to others what he knows,

Though spoke with angels' tongues, the words were all too poor.

And horror seizes him, that holiest thing,

Even in thought belittled, by his words

To make so little, that the very speech seems sin.

And shuddering, he closes up his lips.

This vow, the initiate laid upon himself, wise law

Laid upon meaner spirits: never to make known

What, on a holy night, they saw and felt and heard.

Lest even the nobler sort should find their barking folly

Trouble his devotion, and their wordy trash

Stir him to wroth even with the holiest, — lest it should be

So trampled in the mire, — so mere a thing of rote

That it became the plaything of the sophists

A ware word-mongers hawk about and chaffer,

Dispensing penny-wise;

A cloak for clever-tongued hypocrisy, — a birch, perchance,

To school the merry child, — and at the end, so void,

So utterly empty, that its sole life's root

Is in its echo upon alien tongues.

Thy sons, oh goddess, did not vainly flaunt

Thy honor in the streets and market-place, but bore it

Locked in their bosom's inmost shrine.

Therefore thou livest not within their mouths:

Thee with their lives they worshipped; in their deeds thou livest still.

This night, too, holy one! I have beheld thee, —

Thee, whom in thy sons' lives I oft times found revealed,

And felt unseen, as soul of all their deeds.

Thou art that lofty purpose, that firm faith

Of Godhead, which — though all the world should fall — nor swerves nor shakes.