Hyperion to Bellarmin
Whither could I flee from myself, had I not the dear days of my youth?
Like a spirit that finds no rest by Acheron, I revisit the deserted scenes of my life. All things age and renew themselves. Why are we excluded from nature’s beautiful cycle? Or does it hold for us too?
I'd gladly believe it, but for one thing in us that boils up from the depths of our being like the titan in Etna, the monstrous striving to be everything.
And yet who’d not rather feel it in himself like seething oil than own that he was born for the yoke and the whip? Which is nobler: a rampant battle-steed or a droopy-eared nag?
Dear friend! there was a time when my breast too basked in great hopes, when for me too the joy of immortality throbbed in every pulse, when I would wander amid grand designs as if in some vast sylvan night, when, like the fish of the ocean, I’d happily press on and ever onwards in my shoreless future.
How boldly, blissful nature! did the youth leap from your cradle! how he rejoiced in his untested arms! His bow was ready strung and his arrows rustled in the quiver, and the immortals, the sublime spirits of antiquity, were his leaders, and his Adamas was in their midst.
Wherever I was or went, these glorious forms kept me company; like flames heroic deeds from all the ages mingled in my mind, and just as those gigantic shapes, the clouds of heaven, merge together into one exultant storm, so merged in me the hundredfold triumphs of the Olympiads, became one single endless triumph.
Who can withstand it, who is not floored by the terrible glory of antiquity, like young woods flattened by a hurricane, when it seizes him as I was seized, and when, like me, he lacks the element in which to gain a firming sense of self?
Oh, like a storm the greatness of the ancients surely bowed my head, it blasted the bloom from my cheek, and often I would lie where no eye could see me, under a thousand tears, like a fallen fir when it lies by the stream and hides its withered crown beneath the waters. How gladly I’d have bought with blood a moment from a great man’s life!
But what help to me was that? The fact is, no one wanted me.
Oh, it’s pitiful to see oneself so crushed; and let him who finds this hard to understand not trouble himself further, and give his thanks to nature for having like the butterflies created him for joy, and go and in his life speak nevermore of misery and pain.
I loved my heroes as a fly loves the light; I’d seek their dangerous nearness and flee from it and seek it out again.
Like a bleeding hart into the stream, I would often plunge headlong into the whirlpool of joy, to cool my burning breast and wash away the glorious raving dreams of fame and greatness, but what help was that?
And often when at midnight my heated heart drove me down into the garden beneath the dewy trees, and the burn’s lullaby and the balmy breeze and the moonlight soothed my senses, and so tranquil and free the silver clouds above me stirred, and the ebbing voice of the surging sea sounded faintly from afar, how fondly all its love’s great phantoms played then with my heart!
‘Farewell, you heavenly ones!’ I often spoke in spirit, when over me the softly sounding melody of morning’s light began, ‘you glorious dead, farewell! Could I only follow you, shake off all this age has given me and set forth into the freer realm of the shades!’
But I languish parched in my chains and snatch with bitter joy the beggarly bowl that’s offered for my thirst.