Hyperion to Bellarmin
We were living the last lovely moments of the year, on our return from Attica.
A brother of spring was the autumn for us, full of mellow fire, a feast time for commemorating sorrows and past joys of love. The withering leaves wore the red hues of dusk, only the spruce and the laurel stood in eternal green. In the bright breezes wandering birds lingered, others swarmed in vineyard and garden, merrily reaping what people had left. And the heavenly light streamed pure from the open sky, through all the branches smiled the holy sun, the goodly, that never I name without joy and thanks, that often in deep grief has healed me with a glance and purged my soul of discontent and cares.
We revisited all our dearest paths, Diotima and I, vanished hours of bliss would meet us everywhere.
We remembered the past May, we’d never before seen the earth as then, we said, it had been transformed, a silver cloud of blossom, a joyful flame of life, freed of all coarser stuff.
‘Oh! all was so full of joy and hope,’ cried Diotima, ‘so full of ceaseless growth and yet so effortless too, so blissfully at peace, like a child lost in play with not a thought in the world.’
‘It’s by this that I know it, the soul of nature,’ I cried, ‘by this still fire, by this lingering in its mighty haste.’
‘And it’s so dear to the happy, this lingering,’ cried Diotima; ‘you remember? we stood together on the bridge one evening, after a violent storm, and the red mountain torrent shot away like an arrow beneath
us, but beside it the woods were greening in peace and the bright beech leaves barely stirred. How it warmed our hearts that the soulful green did not fly away from us too like the stream, and the beautiful spring held still for us like a tame bird, but now just the same it’s over the hills and long gone.’
We smiled at the phrase, although we felt more like grieving.
So too our own bliss would pass, and this we foresaw.
O Bellarmin! who then may say he stands fast when even the beautiful ripens so towards its fate, when even the divine must humble itself and share mortality with all that is mortal!