Diotima to Hyperion
I'd mostly shut myself in since you went away, dear Hyperion! Today I was once again outdoors.
In the clement February air I’ve gathered life and bring you what I’ve gathered. It’s still done me good too, the fresh warming of heaven, still I’ve been able to share in it, the new bliss of the plant world, pure and ever the same, where everything grieves and joys again in its season.
Hyperion! O my Hyperion! why don’t we also tread the quiet paths of life? They are holy names, winter and spring and summer and
autumn! but we do not know them. Is it not sin to grieve in spring? why then do we do it?
Forgive me! the children of the earth live through the sun alone; I live through you, I have other joys, is it then wonder if I have other grief? and must I grieve? must I then?
Brave one! dear one! should I wither when you shine? should my heart wilt when the lust of victory wakes in all your sinews? Had I once heard that a Greek youth were setting forth to drag our good people from its shame, to return it to maternal beauty whence it sprang, how I should have roused from childhood’s dream and thirsted for the image of the worthy one! and now that he’s here, now that he’s mine, can I still weep? O silly girl! is it not real? isn’t he that glorious youth, and is he not mine? O you shades of blissful time, you my beloved memories!
For it seems to me barely yesterday, that magical evening when the holy stranger met me for the first time, when like a grieving genius he glanced into the sylvan shades where the carefree maiden sat in the dream of youth — in the breath of May he came, Ionia’s magical breath of May, and this made him blossom the more for me, it waved his locks, it unfolded his lips like flowers, it dissolved into smiles his sorrow, and O you beams of heaven! how you did shine on me out of those eyes, those inspiriting springs where in the shade of sheltering arches eternal life shimmers and wells! —
Benevolent gods! how beautiful he became with his gaze upon me! how the whole youth, grown taller by a span, stood there in easy vigour, save that he let his loving arms hang humbly down as if they were nothing! and how he then looked up in rapture, as if I’d soared into heaven and were no longer there, oh! how he now smiled and blushed in all the grace of his heart when he became aware of me again and between the clouding tears his Phoebus eye shone through, to ask ‘is it you? is it really you?’
And why did he meet me with such reverence, so full of loving superstitious awe? why had he first bowed his head, why was the divine youth so full of longing and sorrow? His genius was too blissful to remain alone, and too poor the world to comprehend it. Oh, that made for such a lovely image, woven of greatness and grief! But now it’s different! the grief is gone! He’s found his work to do, he’s the sick man no more! —
I was full of sighing when I began to write to you, my love! Now I’m nought but joy. So does to speak of you make happy. And see! that’s how it shall stay. Farewell!