As on holiday, to see the field
A countryman goes out in the morning, when
Out of the hot night the cooling lightning had fallen
For a long time, and in the distance thunder sounded,
And the stream once again fills its banks,
Fresh green covers the earth,
The reassuring rain falls from the heavens,
The grapevine drips, and the trees
Of the grove stand gleaming in the quiet sun:
So they stand in good weather,
Mastered by no one, but All-Presence,
So wonderful, holds in its light embrace
The powerful, godly beauty of Nature.
So when she seems to sleep at certain times of the year,
In the sky or under the garden leaves, or among the world’s people,
The poets’ faces are also sad,
They seem to be alone, but they’re always
Having a premonition, as Nature does when she rests.
Now day breaks! I attended to its coming,
And what I saw my words must convey as holy,
For she herself, who is older than Time
And higher than the gods of East and West,
Nature has now awakened to the clashing of armies
And from the upper air to the abyss below,
According to fixed law, as once produced from holy Chaos,
The All-Inspiring
Begins to stir once more.
And a fire gleams, as in that man’s eye
When he makes great plans; so
Once more, with signs for kindling,
The deeds of the world
Stir fire in the souls of poets,
And what went before, barely noticed,
Is only now revealed,
And those who happily farm our land
In the form of workers are now revealed
As the gods’ all-living powers.
You ask where they are? Their spirit drifts in song
When the sun of day and warm earth
Grow, and storms in the air, and others
Prepared in the depths of time,
Full of meaning and murmuring to us,
Wander between heaven and earth and among the people.
They are everyone’s thoughts together
And quietly find their lodging in the souls of poets,
So that suddenly dazed, long familiar
With the infinite, exalted by memory,
Brought to the kindling point by the holy radiance,
The fruit born of love, the work of God and men,
The song succeeds in testimony to both.
So it happened, as the poets say, when she wanted
To see the god made visible, his lightning fell
On Semele’s house, and the one struck by God
Bore holy Bacchus, the fruit of the storm.
And so it is the songs of earth, without danger,
Now drink the fire of heaven.
Under God’s thunderstorms, fellow poets,
We must stand bare-headed to grasp
The Father’s radiance with our own hands,
Wrap the heavenly gift as song
And give it to the people.
For if only, like children,
We have pure hearts, and our hands are guiltless,
The Father’s radiance won’t burn us,
And, deeply shaken, taking the Strong One’s sufferings
As our own, our hearts will stand fast
In God’s high down-rushing storm as he approaches.
But woe is me! when of
Woe me!
And let me confess
I approached to see the gods,
And they themselves threw me down beneath the living,
False priest that I am, into the dark, that I
Sing my warning song to those who can be taught.
There
— Hölderlin (via here)
Notes from a Room 