Читать книгу The Greatest German Classics (Vol. 1-14) - Various - Страница 1293

Much have I lived through, although my tresses

Youthfully waver still round my temples;

Manifold horrors have mine eyes witnessed;

Warfare's dire anguish, Ilion's night,

When it fell;

Through the o'erclouded, dust over-shadow'd

Tumult of war, to gods have I hearken'd,

Fearfully shouting; hearken'd while discord's

Brazen voices clang through the field

Rampart-wards.

Ah, yet standing were Ilion's

Ramparts; nathless the glowing flames

Shot from neighbor to neighbor roof,

Ever spreading from here and there,

with their tempest's fiery blast,

Over the night-darkened city.—

Flying, saw I through smoke and glare,

And the flash of the tonguèd flames,

Dreadful, threatening gods draw near;

Wondrous figures, of giant mould,

Onward striding through the weird

Gloom of fire-luminous vapor.

Saw I them, or did my mind,

Anguish-torn, itself body forth

Phantoms so terrible—never more

Can I tell; but that I this

Horrible shape with eyes behold,

This of a surety know I!

Yea, with my hands could clutch it even,

Did not fear, from the perilous

Venture, ever withhold me.

Tell me, of Phorkyas'

Daughters which art thou?

For to that family

Thee must I liken.

Art thou, may be, one of the gray-born?

One eye only, and but one tooth

Using still alternately?

One of the Graiæ art thou?

Darest thou, Horror,

Thus beside beauty,

Or to the searching glance

Phoebus' unveil thee?

Nathless step thou forward undaunted;

For the horrible sees he not,

As his hallowed glances yet

Never gazed upon shadows.

But a tragical fate, alas,

Us, poor mortals, constrains to bear

Anguish of vision, unspeakable,

Which the contemptible, ever-detestable,

Doth in lovers of beauty wake!

Yea, so hearken then, if thou dar'st

Us to encounter, hear our curse,

Hark to each imprecation's threat,

Out of the curse-breathing lips of the happy ones,

Who by the gods created are!