Agile as a spirit on a mission to glory, to the highest good,
the sun, clad in all its splendor,
rises, and the masked darkness
falls silently from over the awakened earth-
the mountains are covered with snow, and the altars, which see no smoking seal, spit flame above the scarlet clouds. The altars of the unseen smoking seal,
spit flame above the scarlet clouds, and with the birth of that
brightness, the prayers of the great ocean clamored, and the
birds of prey answered to the debugging song and cried out their morning song.
All the flowers of the fields and forests opened their eyelids,
opened their quivering eyelids to bear the kiss of the day,
and raised their censers high in the atmosphere,
and the oriental spices in the censers burned with the new light,
and burned like inexhaustible fountains slowly burning up to the skies,
and sent fragrant sighs up to the smiling heavens. Thus the earth, the islands, the seas, and all the forms therein
which had a living character and appearance
woke up in due time
as did the sun, their father, and one after another undertook the labors which he had once undertaken alone in the ancient centuries, and which he had since assigned to
them each a share in: but I
had been obliged, by the necessity of secrecy, to take the place of the sun in the sky.
had, by the thoughts of the heart that must be kept secret;
was awake all night like the stars that light the night sky,
and now they had all lain down to sleep, and I was stretching my weary arms and legs under
a gray mast
that had once been the trunk of an old oak in one of the green passes of the Apennines
: the night had fled before me
and the day
had fled before me.
The night had fled before me; the day, from behind me, had risen,
the sea, at my feet; and above me, a blue sky,
when strange visions appeared with a succession of floating thoughts
but not of sleep, for the unfolding shadows of that
were so transparent, and the scene
passed through them like the mountains at twilight
. Vaguely hazy but clearly discernible; and in me,
I know, there has been that freshness of dawn,
hair and forehead bathed in the same morning sunset,
having sat like this, leaning against the same trunks of the same trees,
sitting on that grassy hillside, as if
hearing the bird-doors, the ocean, and the flowing fountains
there were exchanging sweet words through the amorous wind and music,
and then a vision unfolded in my mind.
As I lay down in that vision of marvelous thoughts,
it was roughly what I had heard and seen in my daydream.
I felt that I was sitting near an avenue,
which was covered with a thick layer of summer dust,
as if it were an array of mosquitoes in the hazy twilight glow,
and there were countless pedestrians coming and going in a continuous stream,
all in a hurry, and apparently none of them
knew from whence he came, and whither he traveled!
Or what makes him one of them,
but being in the crowd, being carried along,
like one of the thousands of leaves on a summer coffin,
the old and the young, the grown-ups and the infants, form
a mingled and rushing torrent, and some of them,
are fleeing from the things that make them fearful,
and the people are not afraid of them. things,
some, however, deliberately seeking what others fear,
others, going step by step toward the grave,
but caring to study the trampled subterranean worms and insects,
and some, in their own shadows
walking miserably and sadly, calling it death;
there are some, who shun it as if from the ghosts,
ready to faint at any moment from the difficulty of catching their breath;
but the greater number, in a behavior interlaced with each other,
chased or dodged away the shadows cast by the floating clouds,
or the birds that disappeared into the air at noon,
and followed paths along which no flowers ever grew: one
exhausted by thirst, and wearied by vain weary with exertion,
hearing not the pleasant springs from those mossy green caves,
ever flowing with wonderful music;
feeling not the breeze that blew from the forests,
recounting the green paths and woodland meadows,
and the arching branches of the sky-scraping elms that dotted the landscape,
and the riverside where the violets were in full bloom. Resting in beauty's dream,
and knowing only to go on as usual with gloomy folly and foolishness.
Just as I was watching and gazing, the crowd on the avenue,
which I thought was mad, like a forest in June
was met by a southerly wind that was shaking the afterglow of the day,
a cold gaze, as cold as snow and ice,
brighter than at noon, to flood the sun with a glare that blinded
as the sun's rays obscure the stars.
Like a crescent moon - as the storm gathers strength from dreamland
and her white carapace still warbles
On the red edge of the night illuminated by the setting sun -
As if to announce that it will come. Holding high
the ghost of its dead mother, the shadowy form
leaning forward from her baby carriage in the darkness-
so a chariot, overriding its own silent
silent, surging, rushing brightness came, and in it
sat forms as if tortured and deformed by age-tortured deformity,
wearing a black hood and a double cloak,
huddled in the dark shadows of the grave, and the black veil that covered the head where it seemed
should have been
was like a cloud, a kind of obscuring, hazy fog,
that dimmed the glare somewhat. The driver of the chariot was
like Janus, and his faces were four in number
as he drove a flock of magical wings;
and the forms that were pulling the chariot in the succession of electric lights
were nowhere to be seen: and I heard only the gentle wind
carrying the music of their ever-vibrating wings.
This was the only thing that I could hear, and I was able to hear it in the air. The eyes of all the four faces of the driver,
were bound with bands of cloth; and the quickness of the front, and the blindness of the rear, did no good,
not even the glare of the sun, which discolors it, was of no avail.
The sight of the bound eyes could not penetrate past
all that was being done, had been done, was about to be done;
the chariot's guides were out of order, but it went on,
stately and majestically, with a speed befitting solemnity and decorum.
That crowd gave way, and I rose in terror,
or seemed to rise, for sinking too deep into illusion;
as if it were a tumultuous floating cloud carried by a gale,
I saw thousands of wildly singing and dancing people,
as if in ecstasy, just as if in a carnival assembly,
to meet with pomp and circumstance the victorious
From the Senate, from the theater,
from the piazza, solemn Rome pours out her living torrent
and when yoked to those who are otherwise free, they are quick to bend their heads to bear it,
and there is no lack of resemblance to a triumphal procession,
and wherever the charioteer passes through, there are
multiplied
numberless crowds of people, and the crowd of people, and the people of the city are all in a frenzy.
Numerous captives were borne along: all those who had grown old through
possession or torture,
all those who had given all their prime years to work or endurance, and whose youth
had been exhausted in joy or pain at the last moment,
and who had survived only with a body that could no longer blossom;
and such other men as were not able to bear the fruit;
and the same men, and who were not able to bear the fruit, but were not able to bear it.
And such, whose infamy or honorable name
Increases day by day, till the great winter denies to them all the form and name of this
Green world;
And those who are not in it are a holy minority, but only a group of men
Unable to bend the spirit to the conqueror, -
They are a holy minority, but only a group of men
Unable to bend the spirit to the conqueror, -
They are a holy minority.
The moment their flame of life touches this earthly world
they fly like eagles back to the firmament of their former abode,
or, disregarding the rights of the world, their life is a matter of the most solemn nature, and they are not to be found in the earthly world.
Treating crowns and treasures as dung ......"
None of the wise men and saints of Athens or Jerusalem
were to be numbered, and appeared neither in the ranks of their captors
nor with the obscenity-mouthed crowd behind them,
nor in the forefront, the rabble in the forefront molesting.
The debauched dance grew wilder and wilder in front,
and the leaders, swift as shadows on the grass,
swifter than chariots and never taking a moment's rest,
dancing wildly and wildly to the rude music,
dancing wildly and mingling with each other, and growing wilder and wilder,
they were suffering for the torturous joy,
and they were suffer,
and convulse, and with the swift whirlwind of the caracal genie
which from the beginning of the universe
has spent its idle hours with wickedness,
they threw back their heads and let their long hair blow in the wind.
They threw back their heads, and let their long hair blow in the wind,
and danced around her, who made the sun lose its color,
and young men and women flung out their wild arms,
and moved quickly on their feet; they would withdraw from the crowd,
and then they would approach each other and bend down to each other,
and in their hearts they would be kindled like a fire; and when they blushed,
liked moths, they were attracted by the light and curbed by the fire. attracted by the light, and restrained by the fire,
often marching towards their glorious destruction,
until, as if two clouds had been forced into a ravine,
and had made the mountains tremble, they met with electricity and fire,
and, when the shock had not yet worn off, it was dispersed in a shower of rain and dew,
and the passionate ties that held them together crumbled,
and the one fell, and the other lost his strength, and the other was lost. One falls, the other loses consciousness
and lies on the road, dead, and not alone in pairs,
and before I can say where, the chariot
has passed over them without trace,
like the foam left behind by the fury of the sea
drying on the barren shore.... Behind them,
old men and women shook their gray hair in the humiliating wind, their clothes dirty and disheveled,
dancing in a staggering fashion, struggling with their weakened limbs
to climb on the brightly-lit car, only to be
thrown farther away, obscured by deeper shadows
. They danced in circles, not a little less frenzied because their wills were
lacking, though the eerie shadows
had plunged into the crowd, circling them and each other,
fulfilling the task, and the people from the dust
reverted back to the dust again, and where they lay down and rotted
covered with a sheet of covering and did . ...things that have been done.
This bleak parade scene is hard for me to comprehend,
I can't help but ask myself out loud - what is all this?
Who are the figures in the car? And why are they here?"
I also wanted to ask - "Has this gone wrong?
A voice answered - "Life is wide - I turned around and
realized (God, have mercy on this pitiful situation!).
I thought it was an ancient root,
twisted into a strange shape, growing at the foot of the mountain,
but it was really one of the misguided race;
I thought it was a scattering of white grass,
but it was only his hair that had faded and thinned;
it attempted to but failed to conceal the orifice,
is, or was, where his eyes were,
and the cold face (which knew what I thought), said,
"If you can restrain yourself from attending the dance, as I have done,
"I will tell you what has caused my companion and I
to be reduced to bear such deep and contemptuous humiliation,
recounting the passage of this procession since early morning;
"If the longing for a poverty-stricken world is not insatiable,
you may follow the observation until late in the night, but
I am weary." He tottered, as if
unable to overcome the weight of his own words, so
he took a moment to catch his breath; and without waiting for him to resume his speech,
I asked, "First of all, who are you?" "Before you can remember
"I have loved and hated and feared and suffered,
been and lived. If the spark which God kindled in my
soul had burned with purer powder,
"Now corruption would not have taken so much from that Rousseau of old"
and this appearance would not have
shamed the man who was ashamed to bear it;
"If I have been extinguished, yet the
sparks I have sent forth have lighted thousands of pilot lights."
"And who are all those locked behind car seats?"
"Sages and great men who will not be forgotten by succeeding generations - who
wore helmets, coronets, episcopal crowns, and garlands woven
into bright lights, symbols of authority in the empire of ideas -
"Their learning does not teach men how to know themselves,
their ability is not sufficient to detoxify the mysteries of the heart,
and in search of the imagined dawn of truth,
"they fall into the deep night before dusk." Who is it that is impeached against
the forehead, hands interlocked in chains?
"The spawn of a raging age, who had endeavored
"to win the world, and, when its hopes were dashed,
had lost all that was original greatness in it,
which would have gained more praise
than the virtues themselves "and peace, had not chance with eagle's plumes
carried him up to the thousands of climbers who had preceded him:
tumbled down, tumbled down like Napoleon down to the
"peaks and summits." --I felt my face change suddenly;
and as I saw the shadow's grasp loosen as it departed
leaving behind an earth so large and so weak
that to it any dwarf could come along
and kick, I grieved: for the contrary will
and Authority in ruling our mortal days and nights
Why God should make the ends of goodness and the means
Incongruous; and out of despair I
Almost ashamed of my eye's desire,
Its willingness to look at the outdated and tedious scenes of a time that was once, and now can hardly be said to have
Been changed.
"See, the plunderers and the plundered," said the guide to me
"Voltaire, Paul and Catherine,
Frederick and Leopold, demagogues and tyrants,
saints-- -the names the world thinks are always ancient,
"In life and in the wars they have fought,
She, always, is the conqueror. And it is only my heart that conquers me, and neither age, nor mockery,
"nor tears, nor the grave of the present, can
bend it. --Let the past be all past,"
I cry out, "Neither this world nor its grim encounters
"are more glorious than it has ever been,
and I wish to honor the A class that can wither away in old age
and then paint
"a new image" on its untrue and fragile mirror. "There's always a new image coming up
on the bubble, and you can paint it if you want to;
we're just following in the footsteps of those who came before us,
" casting our shadows on the fading bubble.
But note the sight of the ghosts of the great men of old
locked behind the seat of that triumphal car;
"The great Plato had a part to play in life and a part to play in death.
In redeeming the joys and sorrows unknown to his teacher,
the one who governed his destiny had been a beautiful star,
"The life that had not for so long opened the flowers of heaven had conquered with love
his heart and mind, which neither gold, nor misery, nor age,
nor idleness, nor slavery had conquered.
"Near him walked two men
The teacher and the pupil, after that pupil's kingship
Tame as a chained vulture.
"He whose one arm can darken the world,
he who is fame singled out from among the many conquerors
to carry her thundering favorites;
"the other who has survived through wars and plagues,
and who has ranked himself in men's minds as The one who has held the key to the eternal door of truth,
"If the eagle-like spirit at the base of the wall had not broken through the night like
an electric light-he had forced that nature
to awaken from its slumber its changeable forms,
"guiding him to its cave, inside of which
are sealed all manner of secrets within the realm of its dominion.
Look again at the great singers of antiquity, who and the gentle
"passion with which they sang, and from whose songs
it is clear that the immortal melody
still manages to elicit the ****ing of the infected by its own proper contagion
"today! --while I am
suffering for what I wrote or worse!
My words contain primitives that can cause misfortune -
"more like someone else's than their creation."
At this, he pointed his finger again towards a group of people,
from which I quickly recognized Caesar Sinister.
Successors, from him till Constantine the Great,
those tyrannical chiefs who had established many kingly lineages by their violence
and intriguing traps
and had spread everywhere the plagues of gold and fishy blood:
Gregorius and John, and the holy men-at-arms,
rising like shadows between men and God ;
so much so that that occultation, which had been high in the heavens,
was at last saluted by the worship of the world at their feet,
in place of the true sun, which it had extinguished-
"they were given power only to destroy "
The Guide replied, "I, however, belong to the line of the Creator,
"even if all that was created was a world of pain."
"Where do you come from?" I said, "Where to go?
How did your journey begin, and why did you come?
"My eyes are tired of the endless stream of people,
and my heart is agonizing over a sad thought-
Please speak!" "Where from, I seem to be able
"to know something of; how by what means Nga-do
has fallen into this dreadful situation even you can guess;
why it should be so is not for me to know;
"much less to mention that the eye-questor Not to mention where the eye-watchers are driving me -
but you can go along, and from spectator to actor or victim of
this disaster, and perhaps
"I can understand from what you have seen and heard, and the lessons you have learned
". Listen to this: at the first sign of April,
when all the trees were in contact with the sunny spring season
"The azure atmosphere, the tops of the trees began to burn
dazzling green fires, and I was lying in the foothills of a
high mountain, from whence it is impossible to tell,
"that mountain has formed a cavern both high and deep,
from which flows slowly a graceful stream,
clear as the clear air, the tranquil waters
"drenched with bent and tender grasses, continually nourishing the roots of
fragrant flowers, and filling the forests
with marvelous acoustics, which whoever hears it will forget
"all joys, all pains, all loves and hates,
all that was known before this quiet moment;
and a sleeping mother will no longer dream
"of her only son, who died in her arms at twilight--
A king would no longer grieve endlessly that his head
was deprived of a crown,
"but would be able to watch in silence as the sun hovering over the oceans
gilded his rival's emerging grandeur.
You will also forget the futility of grieving for the sick,
"forget the sickness from which you cannot find salvation
forget the thought that no other sleep can put an end to it,
and that no other music can be removed from the memory
"to make one forget all the
"thoughts of the sickness," and to make one forget that there is nothing that can be done to make him forget the world, and that no other music can be removed from his memory. The magic of forgetfulness is wonderful; and I know nothing of whether I have lived before
such a sleep, of whether there is a heaven of my imagination and a hell as cold as the earth
from which I have awakened and wept.
I rose, and for a moment, though it was daytime,
"where the woods and the running water were there was a trace of light
still preserved, which was brighter and more divine than that which the common sun pours out
on the common earth,
"and everywhere was filled with magical acoustics
and those
sounds weave a music that can make one forget,
so that perception is no longer clear to running water and shadows;
"When I look up and look in all directions, the bright light of the morning
is everywhere, and has flowed out of the caverns of the east,
and on the springs that sparkle like gold, the sun
"is brilliantly shining. "The brilliant image of the sun blazing into all the
maze-like forests and the paths of those forests in which it winds and twists
and burns with turquoise fire
"in the center of the sun, like the sun in the blaze of his own
glory, in the ever-shining light
of the springs that constantly quake p>constantly trembling springs, there stood a
"form of bright light． With her left hand she showered the rain on the
earth, as if she were the dawn, and the invisible
rain kept singing a silvery song,
"landing on the mossy green grass,
while over the grassy mangroves vaguely discernible in front of me,
the rainbow, unfolding her brilliantly-colored tapestry.
"In her right hand she held a delicate crystal vase,
clad in a cloak woven of forget-me-nots;
and as she passed through the cavern, which was both high and deep,
"her paws landed with such lightness and dexterity,
that they would not have shattered the mirror-like surface of the water,
and the rainbow, unfolding her cape of brilliant colors.
She glided along the mirror-like water,
"Whenever she lowered her head to dodge the black branches,
her hair, as if it were a weeping willow, brushed against the flowing water's soft breast,
and the flowing water whispered merrily and wished to be her pillow cushion.
"Like a lover intoxicated by love in a dream
floating on a lake full of water lilies, obeying
wonderful music through a silvery mist, the form
"seemed to walk now and then on her wave-kissing feet,
treading on the watery waves, and, at times, blowing in the direction of the The wind that wrinkles the water
The wind that wrinkles the amethyst waters glides by the wind,
"Now and then, along the light of a hazy morning sun among the trees,
Or along the soft shadows under a tree;
Her feet, ever obedient to the persistent
"The leaves, the waves, dripping water, the birds and the bees
singing, always in a fresh
sweet rhythmic movement, as of a summer night's breeze
"lifting up a golden crystalline form from the lake,
between two rocks to meet the rising moon
dancing dances in the wind over a sky where eagles could not fly;
"her feet always obeyed the constant
"leaves, waves, drops, birds, and bees. p>
"And her feet, too, had magical power,
no less than that of beautiful music, and seemed to blot out as they went,
blotting out the thoughts of the one who watched her feet;
"and in a moment all sights seemed to have been none,
and all the thoughts of the one who watched were cast down to the ground
became ashes at her feet, and one by one and one by one
"she trod the sparks of those thoughts to the dust and ashes of death;
as day treads out
the lamps of night one by one from the gates of the East, till the breath of darkness wearying retreats
"and makes the eyes of the heavens bright , even the smallest,
open again: she comes, like the day,
to turn the night into a phantom; and when she has not yet ceased,
"like a man, yet hesitating between desire and shame
I say-if, then, thou wilt indeed
As you seem to be, from some
"faraway land without a name, to this valley of ever
dreams, tell, where I came from,
where I am now, and why I don't fade away with that flowing water.
"Arise and quench your thirst, was her reply.
Like a tightly closed water lily touched by the dewy morning
The wand with its living magic,
"I rise! Bending at her pleasing command,
meeting the glass she held with anxious lips,
suddenly my mind, as if it had become
"The beach, where the waters of the first incoming tide
have swept away the hoof-prints of the deer of the desolate Labrador
the ferocious beasts they fled from
"The jackals, whose tracks on the shore are still distinct,
are left to be washed again by the tide; and thus a new picture, never seen before, is revealed before my eyes
"The beautiful form, in the glare of the light, is gradually
receding, like the silent starburst from the morning star
fading layer by layer into the jewel-green sky of dawn,
"when the sunrise has not yet reddened the peaks of the distant mountains;
and like that most beautiful planet, which, though out of sight
is out of mind, there is a kind of man who can still feel her trace,
"- -
"He wished that his -day's journey would end as it had
begun bathed in the smile of that -yes,
that starlight like the scent of daffodils blown by the evening breeze
built over her wind-guarded gazebo,
"And below, cloaked in extraordinary splendor
the wilderness, and far ahead of her was the stormy stream of vast
flashes of light, a stream of light forbidding obstruction
"The shadows of the leaves and the stones were cast, and where this glare of light
shone, the crowd seemed like skeletons in the sunlight
mountain-like shadow of the car, dimmed in the glare,
some, faster than the chariot; and some
"turning in a circle around it, like the blue sky,
the atmospheric ocean, with the clouds swimming around the moon;
and many more, following the captives behind the chariot,
"followed them singing loud and rapturous praises;
but all, like vapor bubbles in a flooded whirlpool,
eventually all merged into the same track, and were carried along by the surge
"-I, too, was wrapped up in this tide of men<
Wrapped up in this tide of people - I, the fairest of flowers that do not last,
I, not a shadow, nor an island,
"I, not that river's forgettable song,
I, not one that moves by virtue of the river's flow,
The ghost of that former form - is one of the torrent
"I plunged into that very thick
raging torrent of the living, and bared my heart and chest
to that cold light but too soon became crippled.
"Just at the moment when that chariot ride was about to begin its ascent
of the steep slopes opposite that mysterious valley,
I saw a spectacle worthy of the One who wrote the poem
"He, who once started from the lowest level of hell
guided by serene love through the All levels of heaven
and all its glories, and then returned to the world of men,
"recounting the sights of hate and awe, the marvelous story of how all things,
except love, are deformed; and
deaf as the sea's hair, and whitened by anger
"and the world Hear not the,
musical sound that can move a star, whose light is the music of the Benevolent One -
such a spectacle deserves to be written in verse by that poet. --
"Shadows crowded the woods to their depths,
and the earth grew gray, and, as ghosts were all over,
obscure forms filled the space, and fluttered in swarms,
"resembling the equatorial sunshine of a like a mass of blood-sucking bats in the equatorial sun,
bringing a strange black night to some Indian island
without waiting for the dusk to fall; so that everywhere
"were shadows; some casting backward
shadows of shadows that no longer resembled their own,
some like falcons trying to fly still young,
"and some like young eagles trying to fly,
"and some of the shadows of shadows,
"that were not like themselves, and that were not like themselves, and that were not like themselves. p>
"disappeared in the incandescent glare, some like
forest sirens, dancing in unimaginable dances on
sunlit rivers, green grassy banks
"some like apes, gibbering and croaking sitting in one piece,
in the hands of ordinary people ......
Some bring imperial cloaks and ermine hats
"into a cradle, some, like vultures
lying on the triple coronet of the Pope; others
in that which can add an empire to an infant
"or an idiot to frolic wantonly beneath the crown
and use it as a nest. Old, decrepit zombies.
Nursing their descendants under the shade of the devil's wings,
"and smiling from their stiffened eyes,
To reclaim the power that has been delegated to them,
The wormy creatures are clothed in this power to call themselves kings,
"and make the world of men their mortuary grounds.
Others, more humble, like falcons,
resting on the hands of common men, and sometimes flying up
"hovering above their heads; or like flies,
thick as the fog of a dusky swamp, clustering
around the heads of lawyers, priests, politicians, and theoreticians
"around their heads, and some, as if the air
had lost its color to snowflakes, which fell on the most beautiful hair
and the most lustrous breasts, and were finally
"melted by the light of the youth they had extinguished,
and others, like tears, which became those who
p>veils of the sad and weeping ones, and I finally understood
"where the forms that thus pollute the paths we take,
come from; and every short while
the beauty of each form fades away,
and the actions and forms no longer possess the completeness of life
"qualities, the marble-carved foreheads of youths
chapeled by worry, and in eyes that have flashed dreams
and hopes, desires like the lioness who watched her die when she lost her last
"cub; and everyone in the crowd
is constantly giving birth to these shadows,
Like the aspen tree at dusk on an autumn day when the wind
"blows down countless withered leaves. At first,
each had its own image, and, resembling each other,
but soon lost their original shape, as if the
"amorphous clouds shaped faces and postures with the wind;
and with this material, the creative light on the car
made all those busy phantoms, just as
"the sun made all those busy phantoms, just as
"the sun made the sun.
"The sun made the form of that white cloud; and thus,
mask after mask fell from all faces
and bodies to the road; and long before the day's hours
"grew old, like a glimpse of heaven, the joys that awakened the sleepers of the
Valley of Oblivion died;
Some will be exhausted by the dance of horrors,
"and fall, as I did, by the wayside;--
Those who have the most shadows the fastest to depart,
"from each most robust limb the fairest face,
there would be but the least force and beauty left in the body.
"What, then, is life? I question it aloud." --
Late May
to late June
1822