Hyperion to Bellarmin
Only her song should I forget, only these sounds from the soul should never more return in my ceaseless dreams.
One doesn’t know the proudly-sailing swan when it sits slumbering on the bank.
Only when she sang did one truly know this loving silent being who was So loath to speak.
Then, only then, did she, heavenly reticent, come forth in all her majesty and loveliness; then it breathed out from her tender blossoming lips, often so coaxingly and so caressingly, often like the commandment of a god. And how the heart stirred in that divine voice, how all greatness and humility, all the joy and all the grief of life seemed graced in the nobility of those tones!
As the swallow snatches bees in flight, so she always seized us all.
It wasn’t pleasure, it wasn’t admiration, it was the peace of heaven that came among us.
A thousand times I’ve told her and myself: the most beautiful is also the most hallowed. And so was everything about her. As her song, so too her life.