Hyperion, or the Hermit in Greece

Like Jupiter’s eagle to the song of the muses I hark to the wonderful endless harmony in me. Untroubled in mind and soul, strong and blithe, in smiling earnest I sport in spirit with fate and the three sisters, the holy Parcae. Full of godly youth my whole being exults in itself, in all things. Like the starry heavens I’m both still and moved.

I’ve waited long for such a festal spell as this to write to you once more. Now I’m strong enough; now let me tell you.

In the midst of my dark days an acquaintance from Calauria invited me across. I should come into his mountains, he wrote: life there was lived more freely than elsewhere, and besides, amongst the pinewoods and rushing waters, there bloomed lemon groves and palms and sweet herbs and myrtles and the holy vine. High in the mountains he’d built a garden and a house, shaded by lush trees at the rear, and in the searing summer days cooling breezes softly played about it; like a bird from the top of the cedar you could look down into the depths, to the villages and green hills and contented flocks of the island that lay all around the magnificent mountain like children and nourished themselves from its foaming streams.

This at least roused me a little. It was a bright blue April day when I sailed across. The sea was unusually beautiful and limpid, and light the air as in higher regions. In the gliding craft you left the earth behind you, like a luscious dish when holy wine is offered.

A gloomy mood is no match for the influence of sea and air. I gave myself up, fretted no more about myself and others, sought for nothing, pondered nothing, let myself be rocked into half-slumber by the boat, imagining I lay in Charon’s bark. Oh, it’s sweet to drink like this from the chalice of oblivion.

My cheerful boatman would have liked to chat with me, but I kept very taciturn.

He pointed with his finger to show me right and left this or that blue island, but I didn’t look for long and next moment was back in my own dear dreams.

But when he pointed out to me the tranquil peaks in the distance and said that we should soon be in Calauria, I paid at last more heed, and my whole being opened itself to the wonderful power that all of a sudden sweetly and peacefully and inexplicably played with me. Wide- eyed, marvelling and full of joy I gazed out into the mysteries of the distance, my heart trembled lightly and a hand escaped and clutched my boatman in friendly haste — ‘Really?’ I cried, ‘that’s Calauria?’ And when he gave me an odd look, I didn’t know what to make of myself either. I greeted my friend with wonderful tenderness. My whole being was full of sweet unrest.

That very same afternoon I wanted to roam through part of the island. The woods and secret valleys attracted me ineffably, and the clement day lured all out into the open.

It was so plain to see how everything that lives craves more than its daily bread, how even the birds and the beasts have their feast days.

It was a rapturous sight! As when the mother teasingly asks wherever her dearest might be, and all of the children rush into her lap, and even the smallest stretches its arms from the cradle, so flew and leapt and strove all life into the heavenly air, and beetles and swallows and doves and storks cavorted together in the heights and the depths in joyous confusion, and what the earth held fast found its steps turning to flight, the horse went hurtling over the ditches and over the hedges the deer, and from the ground of the sea the fishes rose up and hopped above the surface. The motherly air infused the hearts of all, uplifted them and drew them to itself.

And the people came out of their doors and felt wonderfully the spiritual breath as gently it stirred the wisps of hair on their brows, as it cooled the streaming sunlight, and benignly they loosened their clothing to take it to their bosom, breathed more sweetly, touched more tenderly the light and lucent soothing sea in which they lived and moved.

O sister of the spirit which lives and sways in us with fiery power, O holy air! how beautiful it is that, all-pervasive and immortal, you’re there with me wherever I may wander!

It’s with the children that the sublime element played most beautifully.

This one hummed happily to himself, a tuneless ditty slipped from the lips of that one, and from another came full-throated cries of joy; this one stretched, that one leapt high; another strolled round, lost in thought.

And all this was the language of one single sense of well-being, all one single response to the caresses of the rapturous breezes.

I was filled with ineffable longing and peace. A strange power swayed me. ‘Friendly spirit,’ I said to myself, ‘whither do you call me? to Elysium or where?’

I went walking in a wood, up by rippling water where it trickled over rocks, where it glided harmless over pebbles, and step by step the valley narrowed, becoming an archway, and lonely the noonday light played in the silent gloom —

Here — would that I could speak, my Bellarmin! that I could write to you calmly!

Speak? oh, I’m a layman in joy, I will speak!

For stillness dwells in the land of the blissful, and above the stars the heart forgets its anguish and its language.

I’ve kept it sacred! like a palladium I’ve carried it within me, the divine that was revealed to me! and if fate henceforth should seize and plunge me down from abyss to abyss and drown in me all energy and all reason, yet shall this one and only outlive myself in me and shine in me and reign in eternal, indestructible glory! —

So you lay there lissomely, sweet life, so you looked up, rose and stood in slender fullness, divinely calm, your heavenly face still filled with the serene rapture I’d disturbed!

Oh, he who’s gazed into the stillness of these eyes, he for whom these sweet lips have opened, of what more shall he speak?

Peace of beauty! divine peace! he who’s once soothed in you his seething life and doubting spirit, how can ought else help him?

I cannot speak of her, but there are hours when the best and the most beautiful appears as in clouds, and the heaven of perfection opens before the intuition of love, then, Bellarmin! then think of her being, then go down on your knees with me, and think of my bliss! but don’t forget that I possessed what you can only sense, that with these eyes I saw what only as in clouds appears to you.

That men will sometimes say that they feel joyful! Oh, believe you me, you've never had even an inkling of joy! Not the shadow of its shadow has appeared to you! Oh, go, you blindlings, and speak no more of the blue aether!

That we can become as children, that still the golden time of innocence returns, the time of peace and freedom, that there’s yet one joy, one resting place on earth!

Is man not grown old and withered, is he not like a fallen leaf that can’t find back to its stem and is whirled around with the winds until it’s buried by the sand?

And yet his spring will come again!

Do not weep when the best decays! soon it will renew itself! Do not grieve when your heart’s melody falls silent! soon there’ll come a hand to make it sound again!

How then was it with me? was I not like a shattered lyre? I sounded still a little, but they were death tones. I’d sung myself a sombre swansong! Id gladly have woven myself a funeral wreath, but I had only winter flowers.

And where then was it now, the deathly silence, the night and desolation of my life? all the beggarly mortality?

It’s true that life’s a poor and lonely thing. We dwell here in the deep like the diamond in the mine. We ask in vain how we came down so that we may find the way back up again.

We're like fire that slumbers in the tinder-dry branch or the flint; and all the while we writhe and seek the end of close confinement. But they come, they make up for eons of struggle, those moments of liberation, when the divine bursts open the dungeon, when the flame frees itself from the wood and surges victorious over the ash, ha! when we feel as if the unbound spirit, forgotten its suffering, its servile form, were returning in triumph to the halls of the sun.