Читать книгу The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03 - Коллектив авторов, Ю. Д. Земенков, Koostaja: Ajakiri New Scientist - Страница 5

  Forever fair, forever calm and bright,

  Life flies on plumage, zephyr-light,

    For those who on the Olympian hill rejoice—

  Moons wane, and races wither to the tomb,

  And 'mid the universal ruin, bloom

    The rosy days of Gods—

                       With Man, the choice,

  Timid and anxious, hesitates between

    The sense's pleasure and the soul's content;

  While on celestial brows, aloft and sheen,

    The beams of both are blent.

  Seek'st thou on earth the life of Gods to share,

  Safe in the Realm of Death?—beware

    To pluck the fruits that glitter to thine eye;

  Content thyself with gazing on their glow—

  Short are the joys Possession can bestow,

    And in Possession sweet Desire will die.

  'Twas not the ninefold chain of waves that bound

    Thy daughter, Ceres, to the Stygian river—

  She pluck'd the fruit of the unholy ground,

    And so—was Hell's forever!

  The Weavers of the Web—the Fates—but sway

  The matter and the things of clay;

    Safe from each change that Time to Matter gives,

  Nature's blest playmate, free at will to stray

    With Gods a god, amidst the fields of Day,

    The FORM, the ARCHETYPE,[4] serenely lives.

  Would'st thou soar heavenward on its joyous wing?

    Cast from thee, Earth, the bitter and the real,

  High from this cramp'd and dungeon being, spring

    Into the Realm of the Ideal!

  Here, bathed, Perfection, in thy purest ray,

  Free from the clogs and taints of clay,

    Hovers divine the Archetypal Man!

  Dim as those phantom ghosts of life that gleam

  And wander voiceless by the Stygian stream,—

    Fair as it stands in fields Elysian,

  Ere down to Flesh the Immortal doth descend:—

    If doubtful ever in the Actual life

  Each contest—here a victory crowns the end

    Of every nobler strife.

  Not from the strife itself to set thee free,

  But more to nerve—doth Victory

    Wave her rich garland from the Ideal clime.

  Whate'er thy wish, the Earth has no repose—

  Life still must drag thee onward as it flows,

    Whirling thee down the dancing surge of Time.

  But when the courage sinks beneath the dull

    Sense of its narrow limits—on the soul,

  Bright from the hill-tops of the Beautiful,

    Bursts the attainèd goal!

  If worth thy while the glory and the strife

  Which fire the lists of Actual Life—

    The ardent rush to fortune or to fame,

  In the hot field where Strength and Valor are,

  And rolls the whirling thunder of the car,

    And the world, breathless, eyes the glorious game—

  Then dare and strive—the prize can but belong

    To him whose valor o'er his tribe prevails;

  In life the victory only crowns the strong—

    He who is feeble fails.

  But Life, whose source, by crags around it pil'd,

  Chafed while confin'd, foams fierce and wild,

    Glides soft and smooth when once its streams expand,

  When its waves, glassing in their silver play,

  Aurora blent with Hesper's milder ray,

    Gain the Still BEAUTIFUL—that Shadow-Land!

  Here, contest grows but interchange of Love;

    All curb is but the bondage of the Grace;

  Gone is each foe,—Peace folds her wings above

    Her native dwelling-place.

  When, through dead stone to breathe a soul of light,

  With the dull matter to unite

    The kindling genius, some great sculptor glows;

  Behold him straining every nerve intent—

  Behold how, o'er the subject element,

    The stately THOUGHT its march laborious goes!

  For never, save to Toil untiring, spoke

    The unwilling Truth from her mysterious well—

  The statue only to the chisel's stroke

    Wakes from its marble cell.

  But onward to the Sphere of Beauty—go

  Onward, O Child of Art! and, lo,

    Out of the matter which thy pains control

  The Statue springs!—not as with labor wrung

  From the hard block, but as from Nothing sprung—

    Airy and light—the offspring of the soul!

  The pangs, the cares, the weary toils it cost

    Leave not a trace when once the work is done—

  The Artist's human frailty merged and lost

    In Art's great victory won!

  If human Sin confronts the rigid law

  Of perfect Truth and Virtue, awe

    Seizes and saddens thee to see how far

  Beyond thy reach, Perfection;—if we test

  By the Ideal of the Good, the best,

    How mean our efforts and our actions are!

  This space between the Ideal of man's soul

    And man's achievement, who hath ever past?

  An ocean spreads between us and that goal

    Where anchor ne'er was cast!

  But fly the boundary of the Senses—live

  The Ideal life free Thought can give;

    And, lo, the gulf shall vanish, and the chill

  Of the soul's impotent despair be gone!

  And with divinity thou sharest the throne,

    Let but divinity become thy will!

  Scorn not the Law—permit its iron band

    The sense (it cannot chain the soul) to thrall.

  Let man no more the will of Jove withstand,

    And Jove the bolt lets fall!

  If, in the woes of Actual Human Life—

  If thou could'st see the serpent strife

    Which the Greek Art has made divine in stone—

  Could'st see the writhing limbs, the livid cheek,

  Note every pang, and hearken every shriek

    Of some despairing lost Laocoon,

  The human nature would thyself subdue

    To share the human woe before thine eye—

  Thy cheek would pale, and all thy soul be true

    To Man's great Sympathy.

  But in the Ideal Realm, aloof and far,

  Where the calm Art's pure dwellers are,

    Lo, the Laocoon writhes, but does not groan.

  Here, no sharp grief the high emotion knows—

  Here, suffering's self is made divine, and shows

    The brave resolve of the firm soul alone:

  Here, lovely as the rainbow on the dew

    Of the spent thunder-cloud, to Art is given,

  Gleaming through Grief's dark veil, the peaceful blue

    Of the sweet Moral Heaven.

  So, in the glorious parable, behold

  How, bow'd to mortal bonds, of old

    Life's dreary path divine Alcides trod:

  The hydra and the lion were his prey,

  And to restore the friend he loved today,

    He went undaunted to the black-brow'd God;

  And all the torments and the labors sore

    Wroth Juno sent—the meek majestic One,

  With patient spirit and unquailing, bore,

    Until the course was run—

  Until the God cast down his garb of clay,

  And rent in hallowing flame away

    The mortal part from the divine—to soar

  To the empyreal air! Behold him spring

  Blithe in the pride of the unwonted wing,

    And the dull matter that confined before

  Sinks downward, downward, downward as a dream!

    Olympian hymns receive the escaping soul,

  And smiling Hebe, from the ambrosial stream,

    Fills for a God the bowl!