Hyperion to Diotima
I’ve waited long, Ill confess to you, I’ve been hoping longingly for a word of farewell from your heart, but you remain silent. That too is the language of your beautiful soul, Diotima.
Yet it’s true, is it not, this doesn’t mean the holier chords must cease? it’s true, is it not, Diotima, though the gentle moonlight of love may sink, the higher stars in its heaven still continue to shine? Oh, this is my final joy, that we remain inseparable, though no sound more return from you to me, no shadow of our lovely days of youth!
I look out into the sunset sea, I stretch out my arms towards the airt where you live, far away, and my soul warms once more with all the joys of love and youth.
O earth! my cradle! all bliss and all pain is in the leave we take of you.
You dear Ionian islands! and you, my Calauria, and you my Tinos, your'e all before my eye, distant as you are, and my spirit flits with the breezes over the lively waters; and you that there shimmer dimly to one side, you shores of Teos and Ephesus where once I walked with
Alabanda in the days of hope, you shine again for me as then, and I’d like to sail across to the land and kiss the soil and warm the soil at my bosom, and stammer all the sweet words of parting to the silent earth before I fly up into freedom.
Pity, pity, that things don’t go better now amongst men, else I’d gladly remain on this good star. But I can do without this earthly orb, and that’s worth more than all that it can give.
‘Let us, O child! suffer slavery in the sunlight,’ said the mother to Polyxena, and her love of life could not have spoken more beautifully. But the sunlight it is that deters me from slavery, it won’t let me stay on this degraded earth and, like paths leading home, the hallowed rays draw me on.
For long the majesty of the fateless soul has been more present to me than all else; I’ve often lived within myself in glorious solitude; I’ve grown used to shaking off all outward things like flakes of snow; how should I then be feared to seek out so-called death? have I not freed myself a thousand times in thought, how should I then hold back from really doing it for once? Are we then like serfs, fettered to the soil we plough? are we like tame fowl that durstn’t run out of the farmyard because that’s where they’re fed?
We're like the young eagles the father drives from the nest, that they may search for their prey in the high aether.
Tomorrow our fleet goes into combat and this one will be hot enough. I look on the battle as a bath to wash the dust off me; and I expect to find what I wish for; wishes like mine are readily granted on the spot. And so I would end after all by achieving something through my campaign, and see that amongst men no effort goes to waste.
‘Pious soul!’ Td like to say, ‘think of me when you come to my grave.’ But they'll probably cast me into the surging sea, and I’m happy to see my remains sink down where the sources all and the streams that I loved gather together, and where the storm-cloud rises up and waters the hills and the valleys that I loved. And we? O Diotima! Diotima! when shall we see one another again?
It’s impossible, and my innermost life rebels at the thought that we could lose each other. I would wander the stars for millennia, clothe myself in all forms, in all of life’s languages just to meet you once more. But I believe that like will soon find like.
Great soul! you'll be able to accept this parting, and so let me wander! Greet your mother! Greet Notara and the other friends!
Also greet the trees where I first met you, and the merry rivulets where we walked, and the lovely gardens of Angele, and let my image meet you when you do, my love! Farewell.