Hyperion to Bellarmin
I thank you for asking me to tell you about myself, for making me remember former times.
That’s what really drove me back to Greece, wanting to live nearer to the playground of my youth.
As into quickening sleep the labourer, so my beleaguered being often sinks into the arms of the innocent past.
Peace of childhood! heavenly peace! how often do I stilly stand before you in loving contemplation, and think to grasp you! Yet we can only conceive of that which once was bad and has been made good again; of childhood, innocence we can have no conception.
When I was still a tranquil child, knowing nought of all that is around us, was Inot then more than I am now, after all the heart’s travail and all the mind’s toiling and striving?
Yes! a divine being is the child as long as it’s not been dipped in the chameleon colours of men.
It’s wholly what it is and that’s why it’s so beautiful.
The force of law and fate can’t touch it; in the child alone is freedom.
In the child is peace; it’s not yet at variance with itself. Richness is in the child; it’s still to know its heart, the penury of life. It is immortal, for it knows nothing of death.
But this men cannot bear. That which is divine must become like one of them, must learn that they too are there, and before nature expels the child from its paradise, men cajole and drag it out onto the ground of the curse, that it may, like them, grind away its life in the sweat of its face.
But the time of awakening is beautiful too, if only we’re not woken out of season.
Oh, they are hallowed days in which our heart first tests its wings, when full of quick and fervent growth we stand there in the glorious world, like the young plant when it unfolds to the morning sun and stretches up its slender arms towards the endless heaven.
How I felt impelled to roam amongst the mountains and along the shore! oh, how I often sat with throbbing heart upon the heights of Tinos, and gazed after the falcons and the cranes, and the doughty sprightly ships as they shrank below the horizon! ‘Down there!’ I thought, ‘down there you too one day will wander,’ and I felt like one who, parched with heat, plunges into the cooling pool and splashes the spumy waters on his brow.
Sighing I’d then turn back towards my home. ‘If only my school years were over,’ I often thought.
Dear boy! They’re far from over yet.
That in man’s youth he thinks the goal so near! That is the most beautiful of all illusions with which nature helps our weakness.
And often when I lay amongst the flowers and basked in the soft spring sunlight, and looked up into the bright blue that embraced the warm earth, when I sat under the elms and willows, in the womb of the mountain, after a quickening shower, when the branches still quivered from the caresses of heaven and golden clouds moved above the dripping woods, or when full of peaceful spirit the evening star rose with those ancient youths, the other heroes of the heavens, and I watched as the life within them propelled itself through the aether
in eternal effortless order, and the peace of the world enfolded and elated me, so that I roused and listened, not knowing what came over me — ‘do you love me, good father in heaven!’ I’d then silently ask, and felt so blissful and sure his answer in my heart.
O you whom I'd invoke as if you were above the stars, whom I called creator of heaven and earth, amiable idol of my childhood, you won't be angry I’ve forgotten you! — Why is the world not so wanting as to make one seek an entity outside it??
Oh, if she’s the daughter of a father, glorious nature, is the daughter’s heart not his heart? her inmost self, is it not He? But do I possess it then? do I know it then?
It’s as if I saw, but then again I take fright, as if it were my own image I'd seen, it’s as if I felt him, the spirit of the world, like the warm hand of a friend, but I awake and think it’s my own fingers I’ve been holding.