"The Death of Empedocles" "Tragedy in two acts by Friedrich Hölderlin or: when the green of the earth will glisten for you anew" "This is his garden!" "There in the veiled penumbra near the bubbling spring, he stood not long ago, as I passed by— You, have you never seen him?" "O Panthea!" "It was only yesterday I came with my father to Sicily." "Yet once when I was but a child" "I saw him in a chariot race at the games in Olympia." "There was much talk about him then, and always his name has stayed with me." "You have to see him now!" "now!" "They say the plants gaze up at him as he walks by, and the waters 'neath the earth strive upward to the surface when his staff grazes the ground!" "And all that may be true!" "And when in a storm he looks at the sky the clouds part and reveal the shimmering cheerful day." "Yet what does that say?" "You must see the man himself!" "If only for a moment, and then flee!" "I myself avoid him." "A terrifying, all-transforming essence is in him." "How does he live with others?" "I grasp nothing of this man;" "does he have his bootless days, as we all do," "When one feels stale and insignificant?" "And is there also human suffering for him?" "Ah!" "When last I saw him there within the shadow of his trees, he surely felt his own deep sorrow— The godly one in wondrous languishing, sadly searching as though he had lost much, looks down to earth, then up into the twilight of" "the grove, as though into blue remoteness his life had fled from him, and the humility of his royal countenance seized my troubled heart— You too must go under," "You magnificent star!" "And it won't be long!" "This I could sense—" "Have you ever spoken to him, Panthea?" "Oh, that you remind me of it!" "Not long ago" "I lay stricken unto death." "Already the bright day was darkening before me and the world faltered like a soulless phantom in its course around the sun." "My father, although a sworn enemy of the man, called him on that desperate day, appealed to this one intimate with Nature, and when the splendid man bade me drink his elixir, my struggling life fused" "in magic reconciliation, and as though restored to sweet and sensuous childhood" "I fell into a trance for many days, how now in newborn joy my essence for the first time unfolded to a world I'd long renounced, my eye disclosed the day in youthful curiosity, and there he stood, Empedocles!" "How godlike and how present to me!" "Beneath his smiling eyes my life blossomed forth again!" "Ah, like a fleecy morning cloud my heart soared upward to that sweet light and" "I was its tender reflection." "O Panthea!" "The sounds that surged from his breast!" "In each syllable of his, every melody sang out to me!" "and the spirit in his words!" "— At his feet" "I'd sit, for hours at a time, as his pupil, his child, gazing out into his ether and, clambering joyously to his own heaven's height, my senses fairly wandered." "What would he say, love, if he but knew!" "He doesn't know." "He needs nothing, traverses his own world; reposing gently like a god he walks among his flowers; the very breeze forbears disturbing this most fortunate one, and from out of himself there waxes in ever-enhancing enjoyment an enthusiasm" "within, until from the night of his creative rapture, the thought, like a spark, leaps, and cheerfully the spirit of deeds that are to come crowd his soul, and the world, the leavening life of humankind, and the larger" "natural world about him radiate—" "Here he feels like a god within his element;" "his joy intones a canticle of heaven;" "he then steps forth to face his people, on days when jostling crowds in vacillating tumult crave a man more powerful than they, that is when he rules, the splendid pilot, and he helps them;" "and when they finally grow accustomed to this eternal stranger, when they would fain accommodate themselves to him, he's gone— Into its shade the silent plant world will draw him, where he finds himself more readily," "and its enigmatic life is present to him in all its multifarious force." "Woman!" "Listen to you!" "How do you know all this?" "I follow traces that he leaves— what, beyond him, is there for me to follow?" "Ah!" "and if I've grasped him, what's that?" "To be him, that is life, and we others are the dream of life.—" "His friend Pausanias has also told me much about him— The young man sees him day in, day out, and Jove's eagle is not prouder than Pausanias— This I do believe!" "I find no fault, dear love, in what you say, and yet my soul mourns wondrously;" "about all this;" "I want to be like you, and then again I don't." "Do all of you on the island act like this?" "We too take our pleasure in great men, and one of them is now the very sun to every Athenian woman," "Sophocles!" "Every woman wishes she could be a thought of this amazing man, and every one of us would gladly save the ever lovely beauty of her youth before it wilts depositing that beauty in the poet's soul" "and each inquires and riddles as to which of the young women of the city that tender, earnest heroine may be, the one he calls Antigone; and our foreheads shine when this friend of gods on cheerful festive days enters the theater;" "yet our delight is free from trouble" "and never does our loving heart lose itself as yours does, captive to a painful worship—" "You sacrifice yourself— I do believe he possesses too much of grandeur, you cannot live at peace," "this boundless one you love so boundlessly, and how will this help him?" "You yourself, you sensed his downfall, good child, and you intend to go into decline with him?" "Play not upon my pride, and fear for him, not me!" "I am not he;" "when he goes down his downfall cannot be mine, for great is also the death of the great—" "What is coming to confront this man, believe me, will confront but him alone, and if he were to sin against all gods, and invite their wrath upon him, and if I should want to sin" "as he had done, to draw the selfsame lot in suffering, that would be as though a stranger tried to interrupt a lovers' quarrel— "What have you to do with us,"" "the gods would say;" ""You fool, you never could insult us like he can"." "You are perhaps more like him than you think;" "how else could you delight in him?" "Dear heart!" "I do not know myself why I belong to him— if only you could see him!" "—" "I thought he might be coming out, you would have seen him then as he passed by— a thing to wish for!" "Is it not so?" "Though I should wean myself of wishes, for it seems as though importunate prayers do not please the gods, and they are right in this!" "No longer will I pray this way— yet hope" "I must, you good gods, for I know nothing other than him— I'd rather pray like other people, dispense, please, rain and sunshine— if I only could!" "O eternal mystery, what we are and what we seek, we cannot find;" "and what we find, that we are not— Yet what is the hour, Delia?" "Your father's now approaching." "I do not know, should we stay or go—" "What did you say?" "my father?" "Come!" "Away!" "Who is that walking there?" "My daughter, I believe and the daughter of my houseguest, who arrived just yesterday at my home." "Is this by chance or are they too seeking him believing, as the people do, that he's been taken up?" "That marvelous report has surely not yet reached my daughter's ears." "And yet she worships him, like the rest;" "I would that he were gone— to forests, deserts, or across the sea or down below, beneath the earth— wherever his unbounded thought may drive him." "But no!" "They must be made to see him once again, so that their frenzied lunacy departs from them." "Where is he, then?" "Not far from here." "There he sits in darkness, soulless." "For the gods have robbed him of his force, ever since the day the man, besotted, in front of all the people recklessly proclaimed himself a god." "The people are besotted, as is he himself." "For they know nothing of the law nor of emergency and they respect no judge;" "their ways are like the foam upon the blindly surging surf that floods our peaceful shores, and every day is spent in wild feasting;" "a feast to outdo all the feasts, the modest holidays of our good gods have of a sudden all gone missing;" "concealing everything, this necromancer obscures both sky and earth in storms he's brewed for us." "And now, surveying all without a care, his spirit entertains itself within his silent halls." "Almighty was the soul of such a man in your domain." "I tell you: they know nothing else than him, desire that all should come from him, and he should be their god, should be their king." "I too stood stupefied by him, profoundly so when he preserved from death my daughter." "What do you make of him, Hermocrates?" "The gods once loved him overmuch." "Yet he is not the first whom soon enough they thrust into the senseless night, cast down from heights of their familiarity because he proved forgetful of the difference in his extravagant delight, feeling for himself alone;" "so it went with him, he is now punished, in arid wastes abandoned— although the final hour for him has not yet come;" "whoever has for so long been their darling will not long bear the insult to his soul, I fear;" "his drowsy spirit will spark to flame anew to work out its revenge," "and, half-roused, a fearsome dreamer speaks in him as once it spoke in those enthusiasts of old who wandered throughout Asia bearing reeds for staffs, whose word was how the gods first came to be." "For then the wide world, replete with life, becomes lost property to him," "And monstrous cravings stir within his breast;" "no matter where it leaps, the scorching flame will clear the path ahead." "All law and art, all custom, every holy word and all that once did ripen here for him in time all these are sore disrupted, and joy and peace our man can never let prevail again among the things that live." "When all is lost he takes it all back again, and this wild man no mortal can restrain in his wild ravings." "And he will never be the tranquil one again." "Old man!" "You do envisage nameless things" "Your word is true and when it is fulfilled then woe to you, dear Sicily, as lovely as you are with all your groves and temples." "The gods' own words will strike him down before his ploys begin." "Call the people to assembly, that I may show to them the face of him of whom they say he's soared unto the ether." "They shall be witness to the curse I'll lay upon him and to his banishment in barren wasteland, that there, never to return again, he'll pay, and dearly, for that evil hour he made himself a god." "Our people, though, are weak." "What if the bold one masters them, do you not fear for me and you and all your gods?" "The priest's harsh word will shatter his bold sense of self." "And will they banish thence the man they once did love, must he then suffer, made wretched by your holy curse," "be banished from his gladdening gardens and from the town that was his home?" "But who would dare to entertain a mortal in their land" "When he is branded by a well-deserved curse?" "Yet what if you should seem to be blaspheming to those who once revered him as a god?" "The tumult of the crowd will wane as soon as they espy him with their eyes again, the one they dreamed was taken up into the gods' high dwelling!" "Already they have made a turn for the better," "For yesterday they gathered, drifting hereabout in mourning, wandering, saying much of him, as I was walking this same path." "At which I said today I would conduct them to him;" "meanwhile they should tarry in their homes, quiet each and all." "and that is why I asked you now to come with me, that we might see if they obeyed me." "You find no one here." "So, come." "Hermocrates!" "What is it?" "I see him there in flesh and blood." "Then let us go, Critias!" "That he may not ensnare us in his talk." "Into my stillness you came softly wandering, you found me out in my dark grotto," "you, my friend!" "you came as I had hoped and from afar, above the earth;" "I rightly sensed your sweet recurrence, lovely day and my familiar friends, you energetic forces in the heights!" "And you are close to me again as once before, you blessed ones, you never-erring sturdy trees within my grove!" "You grew so steadily and daily drank from heaven's source, you humble ones with light and sparks of life well sated the ether pollinating all your blossoms." "O intimate Nature!" "I have you now before my eyes, do you still know your friend, the one you deeply loved, do you know me now no more?" "The priest who brought you living song like sacrificial blood that's gladly shed?" "Oh, by the sacred founts, where quietly the waters gather, where those who thirst on summer days rejuvenate!" "In me, in me, you founts of life, you once flowed all together from the world's depths;" "the parched then came to me—" "Desiccated now am I, no more do mortals take their joy in me— Am I all alone?" "And is it now night up here, the daylight notwithstanding?" "Woe!" "He that saw more lofty things than a mortal eye is now struck blind, I grope about me—" "Where are you, my gods?" "Woe, do you now leave me like a beggar?" "And this breast that loves and is attuned to you, why do you now repel it?" "Why bind in narrow shameful bonds the one born free, who on his own is his own and no one else's?" "Am I condemned to suffer this;" "is my anemic soul in timid Tartarus in thrall to ancient works and ancient days?" "I recognise my self;" "I will it!" "I want to procure the air, vast as your sky is, it must surround me, ha!" "And daylight— tranquility is worth nothing to you!" "Begone!" "By my pride!" "The dust of this poor path" "I will not stoop to kiss, where once upon a time" "I walked in dazzling dreams— that's gone now!" "I was beloved, beloved of you, my gods" "Ah, intimately, as you live with one another so you lived in me, and no!" "That was no dream;" "in this heart of mine I felt you, o phantom!" "That's gone now and you alone, conceal it not!" "You have yourself to blame, you wretched Tantalus" "The sacred precincts you've besmirched, with haughty pride revoked the covenant," "pernicious one!" "For when the genial spirits of the world loved you, forgot themselves in you, you remembered yourself alone, believed, you unregenerate fool, that all beneficence had sold itself to you, that these celestial ones would serve you slavishly!" "Among you is there nowhere an avenger?" "Must I alone pronounce contempt and curse upon my soul?" "Is no one there to snatch from my head the Delphic crown, no one better suited than I myself to shave my head," "as befits a balding seer—" "O all you powers of heaven, what's this?" "Begone!" "Who sent you here?" "The work I have to do, would you now ruin it for me?" "I'll tell you everything in case you do not know;" "then bring all you may do into accord— Pausanias!" "Oh, seek not the man to whom your heart once clung, he is no more, and go, my gentle youth!" "Your countenance enflames my sense, and be it blessing, be it curse, with you each is much too much for me." "But as you will!" "What's happened?" "Long have I abided with you, was thankful to the daylight when from afar" "I saw you, and now I find you noble man!" "Alas!" "Like the oak Zeus struck from crown to sole you have been shattered." "Were you alone?" "I did not hear a spoken word, and yet uncanny sounds of death reverberate in me." "It was the voice of one who thought himself beyond the mortal, because a generous nature had given him too much." "To be like you, familiar as you are with all the godly things in this our world, can never be too much." "So said I, my dear boy, when the holy magic had not yet quit my spirit, and when they still loved me," "who in return loved intensely all the tutelary spirits of the world, o light of sky!" "— it was not men who taught me this— for long ago, when my longing heart fell short and missed the living whole, I turned to you," "I hung on you, I clung to you as plants will cling, in pious joy, long and long, as though blind." "For mortals scarcely recognise the pure yet when the spirit in me bloomed, as did you yourself, and when I knew you, I cried out, "You are alive"" "and as you wander cheerfully among the mortals, and as your heavenly youth so nobly radiates from you and floods all things with its own light, that all may don the colours of your spirit, for me as well this life became a poem." "Your soul was in me;" "openly my heart, like yours, gave itself unto the earnest earth the suffering one, and oft in holy night" "I swore to her, unto death with fearless faith the fateful one." "The winds then wafted otherwise within my grove, and mountain springs were gurgling tenderly, and on the flowers' mild yet fiery breaths came gently to me your more reposeful life," "all your joys, earth!" "Not as you grant them smilingly to weaker ones, but splendid, as they are, all ardent, all true, ripening in labor and in love,— you gave them all to me, and oft when" "perched on mountain heights remote I gazed and mused on life's divine delirium, too deeply moved by all your alterations, and intimating my own destiny," "then the ether breathed to me, as it does to you, a salve upon my love-torn breast, and magically in his vast depths dissolved the riddles nesting in me—" "You blessed one!" "Oh, if only I could say the way it was and call it by its name—" "The changes and the charges of your splendid tutelary forces, whose comrade I then was, o Nature!" "could I but one more time revive it in my soul that in my mute and mortifying breast your sounds might chime again!" "Am I still that?" "O life!" "And if they were to whelm me, all your winged melodies, and if I were now to hear your ancient consonance, grand Nature!" "Alas!" "Abandoned by it all, did I not live with this our holy earth and with this light, with you from whom the soul may never roam, o Father Ether!" "And with all that lives in all-gathering, all-present Mount Olympus?" "—" "Now I weep as one ostracised, and nowhere can I stay, alas, and you as well are taken from me,— don't say a word!" "For love expires as soon as gods have flown, you know that well;" "so leave me now, I am no longer what I was, have nothing more in you." "You still are that man, as truly as you ever were." "And let me say, incomprehensible it is to me, the way you would annihilate yourself." "I well believe it's true, your soul sinks in sleep at times in you, when it has had enough exposure to the world, just as the earth, which you do love, oft occludes herself in deep repose." "Yet do you call her dead when she but rests?" "How sweetly now you toil to grant me consolation!" "You mock my inexperience and think because I did not know your happiness as intimately as you did, now that you're in pain" "I'm talking nonsense." "Did I not see you performing deeds, when our savage state, from you, attained its shape and its direction;" "in its power" "I felt your spirit and your spirit's world, when oft a word from you upon a salutary moment gave me a life for many years, so that a new and a propitious time began from that point on for the boy;" "as with caged deer, when from afar the forest calls they think of home, thus my heart would often throb when you invoked the gladness of the ancient primal world, and did you not limn the lines of times to come" "for me, the way an artist's knowing glance can add the missing piece and make the painting whole?" "Does not humankind's destiny reveal itself entirely to you?" "And know you not the forces of this Nature, that you who are in league with them as mortal never was" "Can, when you will, steer them all in silent mastery?" "Enough!" "You do not know how every word you're saying stings and tortures me." "So must you then in melancholy hate all things that are?" "Oh, honour what you do not understand!" "Why conceal it from me, why make your suffering a riddle to me?" "believe me, nothing is more painful." "And nothing causes greater pain, Pausanias, than riddling on our suffering." "Do you not see?" "Alas!" "I'd rather you knew naught of me and all my mourning." "No!" "I should not utter it aloud, holy Nature!" "Gentle virgin, fleeing every rough approach!" "I spurned you, declared myself alone, your lord and master arrogant barbarian that I am!" "I held you fast to your simplicity, you pure powers, ever youthful!" "And you who raised me joyously, and with delight did nourish me, you who always came back to me, you good ones, I did not respect your soul!" "Yes, I knew it all, had fully learned the life of Nature;" "how should it have remained as sacred as it once was;" "the gods had become mere menials to me, I alone was god, and spoke it out in haughty insolence—" "Oh, believe me, would I never had been born!" "What?" "By dint of a mere word?" "How can you, who are so bold, waiver so?" "By dint of a mere word?" "yes." "And may the gods annihilate me, as they once did love me." "Others do not speak as you do." "The others!" "How could they?" "Indeed," "You marvelous man!" "So intensely loving, envisaging the everlasting world and all its tutelaries, all its forces, therefore you spoke that bold word, even you, alone, and thus you also feel so strongly how with one proud syllable" "you tore yourself away, abandoning the hearts of all the gods and now most lovingly you'll sacrifice yourself to them, o Empedocles!" "—" "Behold!" "What's this?" "Hermocrates the priest, and with him a crowd of people, and Critias the Archon—" "What do they want of me?" "They have long been in pursuit, to find out where you were." "Here is the man of whom you say that living he has risen to Olympus." "And he looks mournful, like a mortal." "You wretched mockers!" "Do you take pleasure when someone suffers whom you once thought great?" "And do you take him to be easy booty, the strong one, once he's weakened?" "His fruit has fallen ripe upon the earth;" "Believe me, not all ripens for the likes of you." "What does he mean by that?" "I beg you, go and tend to your affairs;" "do not meddle in what is mine—" "Yet just one word a priest may surely speak to you?" "Woe!" "You pristine gods!" "You living ones!" "Must this conniving hypocrite infect my mourning with his poison?" "Go!" "Often I protected you, and so it's meet that you should shield me" "You know that this is true, I've told you so," "I know you and your arrant lot." "And long it was quite riddlesome to me, how" "Nature in her daily rounds put up with you." "Alas!" "For even as a boy I was avoiding you who soil all you touch;" "my pious heart, for surely even then I felt it, I feared that you would bend my heart's free love of gods to some obnoxious servitude, that I would treat all things as you treat them," "begone!" "I cannot bear to face a man who abuses holy things as stock in trade." "His gaze is false and chill and dead, and so are all his gods." "Why stand there thunderstruck?" "Get you gone!" "Not until the sacred curse has marked your brow you arrogant blasphemer!" "Be at peace, my friend!" "I warned you that his melancholy now would surely seize him.— The man jeers at me, you heard him, citizens of Agrigent!" "Though I will not exchange harsh words with him in savage quarrel." "It does not suit an aged man like me." "Yet you yourselves should ask him, who is he?" "Oh, leave me,— you surely see it profits none to prod a wounded heart." "Grant me the chance to wander quietly the path I tread along the sacred silent route of death." "The sacrificial beast will be released from yoke and plow, no more the driver's lash to suffer" "Preserve me too this way;" "do not deprive me of my suffering with all your pestilential talk, for holiness is here;" "release my breast from the calamity you are;" "my pain pertains to gods." "What is this, then, Hermocrates, why says the man such unfamiliar things?" "He says that we should go;" "he's clearly skittish." "Well, what do you suppose?" "His senses have grown dull because he claimed to be a god before your very eyes." "Yet since you never take my word for true, inquire of him yourselves." "Let him tell you." "We do believe you." "You do believe him, all of you?" "You shameless ones!" "— Your Jupiter has failed to please today, his countenance is gloomy;" "your idol grants you now no sanctuary and so you're ready to believe the priest?" "Your idol stands stock still and mourns, his spirit taciturn;" "in times devoid of heroes all the youths will yearn for him when he's no longer here;" "and you, you slither all about him, hissing, dare you do that?" "Have your senses grown so coarse that this man's eye does not admonish you?" "And now that he's grown gentle, cowards dare approach him— sacred Nature!" "In your cycles how put up with vipers such as these?" "—" "And now you gape at me and fathom not a single word of what I say;" "you'll have to ask the priest." "For he knows everything." "Oh, listen how now in our faces, yours and mine, the upstart scolds." "Ah, but then why shouldn't he, he's allowed, his master dares do all, you see." "Whoever lures the people says whatever thing he likes;" "I know that well, and yet I do not strive against it for my part, since up to now the gods endure it." "Tolerating much, they remain quite still until the savage boldness reaches its crescendo." "But then blasphemers one and all are snatched away to darkness and abyss." "Fellow citizens!" "I'll tell you what." "With these two in times to come" "I'll have nothing more to do." "Say, how did it come about that this one fooled us so?" "They simply have to go, the pupil and his master." "The time has come!" "— I plead with you, fearsome ones!" "You gods of vengeance!" "— Zeus conducts the clouds" "Poseidon tames the briny waves, but you who tread so softly, to you alone is given lordship over all that lies concealed and where a self-empowering wight emerges from the cradle, there you are, and as he waxes strong in sacrilege" "you abide with him, silently espying, to the depths within his breast, until a careless word betrays to you the gods' own enemy—" "Him too, yes, you knew him, the sly and secretive seducer, he who robbed the people of their sense and flaunted all the laws of this our fatherland, and never did he heed the ancient gods of Agrigent," "and all their priests he disrespected, yet he was not invisible to you, you terrifying ones!" "He kept it hushed, of course, his monstrous dark intent;" "But he is finished now." "Despicable one!" "Did you imagine they would dance a jig when you of late and in their face announced yourself a god?" "You would have ruled in Agrigent, a tyrant solitary and omnipotent;" "and you alone would have possessed these good people, this fair land." "Yet they were silent, shocked;" "they simply stood there;" "and you grew pale, it crippled you, the evil canker in your darkling halls, for there you fled, escaping light of day." "And now you'd like to come and shower me with all your grief, blasphemer of the gods?" "Well, now it's clear!" "He must be put to death." "I told you so;" "I never trusted the dreamer." "O raving ones!" "You speak once more and do not sense that you and we share nothing any longer;" "a stranger now, you are unknown to all that lives." "The source that slakes our thirst is not for you, nor is the fire that serves us well;" "whatever cheers a mortal's heart the gods of vengeance now will snatch from you" "For you is not the cheering light up here above nor green of earth nor any of her fruits," "and breeze no longer grants to you her blessings whenever in your heart you thirst and beg for cooling" "In vain is all of that for you, you'll not partake again of what belongs to us;" "for you belong to the avengers, yes, the holy gods of death alone." "And woe to him from this day forth who in his soul receives a friendly word from you," "to him who greets you, offering his hand, to him who gives you drink at noon," "invites you to his table's entertainments, to him who, when at night you knock upon his door, might grant you sleep beneath his roof," "and when you die, whoever sets a flame upon your funeral pyre— woe to him and you!" "Begone!" "No longer will the nations' gods endure, where temples are, the man who spurns them all." "Let him be gone!" "Let not his curse besmirch us!" "Oh, come with me!" "You will not go alone." "There is one still who honours you, although it is forbidden, dear friend!" "You know the blessing of a friend is mightier than any priest's most baneful curse." "Oh, come with me to foreign shores!" "There too we'll find the light of heaven, and I will pray that it may shine companionably in your soul." "In proud and cheerful Greece, across the sea, the hills grow green, and pleasing shade we'll find beneath the maple trees for you, and zephyrs mild to cool the wanderer's breast;" "and when you are exhausted on those dog days on our far paths we'll pause, with these hands I'll then draw you drink from fountains fresh, and I'll go foraging for food, and twigs I'll weave to shade your head," "and moss and leaves I'll gather for your bed, and while you're sleeping I'll keep watch for you;" "and if it needs must come to pass, I'll kindle there the flame upon your pyre, that they forbid, these shameless ones!" "O faithful heart!" "—" "For me, you citizens, I ask for nothing;" "let all be as you say!" "I beg you to reflect for this boy's sake alone." "Oh, do not turn your faces from me!" "Am I not he about whom you once lovingly assembled?" "You yourselves would shrink from reaching out and touching me, unseemly then it was for you to jostle friends." "You sent to me your sons, and they gave me their hands, those amiable ones, and perched upon your shoulders came your little ones and with your arms you raised them up to me—" "am I not still that one?" "Know you not the man of whom you said you could as beggars go from land to land with him, if he elected you, and if there were a chance in hell you'd follow him to Tartarus below, far, far down below?" "You children!" "You yearned to give me everything and often petulant you forced me to receive from you;" "what fueled and fed your lives." "Then I returned the favour, giving you of mine, and you felt I was giving more and better." "Now I am to leave you;" "deny me not this one request:" "safeguard this youth!" "He never did you harm;" "he merely loves me as you yourselves did love;" "and tell me now, is he not noble, is he not beautiful!" "And in days to come you'll need him, believe me!" "I've told you many times:" "it would be night and bitter cold on earth, calamity would gnaw upon the soul, were not the good gods" "from time to time to send such youths to vitalise the wilting life of humankind." "And you should keep hale, I told you then, these genial tutelaries— protect him now" "and call not woe upon him!" "Promise me!" "Begone!" "We'll hear no more of all you say." "The boy will walk the path that he himself has chosen, pay the price for willful insolence;" "he goes with you, the curse on you inculpates him." "Yet you are silent, Critias!" "Do not try to hide it, you too are struck;" "you knew the boy, did you not, streams of sacrificial blood will never purge your sin?" "I beg you, tell them, my good man!" "They are as though intoxicated, speak a soothing word so that their senses may return to these poor men!" "He still berates us?" "Dwell on your own curse, and stop talking and go!" "Otherwise we'll lay our hands on you!" "Well said, citizens!" "So!" "— You'd like to lay your hands on me, what?" "Already salivating for my life, you wretched harpies?" "Can you then not wait until my spirit's flown to desecrate the corpse?" "Come on!" "Tear the flesh and share the prey and let your priest beg blessings on your meal, his family friends, avenger gods, he has invited!" "— You balk, you unregenerate!" "Do you know me?" "And shall I spoil the nasty prank you have contrived?" "By your gray hairs, man!" "You should return your dust to dust;" "you are not man enough to be the Furies' footman." "Behold!" "You stand there in your ignominy, yet would try to master me?" "Of course, it is a paltry piece of work to hunt and kill a bleeding beast!" "I mourned;" "this man knew that, thus waxed the coward's courage;" "now he seizes me and sinks the people's fangs into my heart." "Oh, who, who will save the savaged prey, who will offer sanctuary, sparing one who homeless drifts scarred and shamed past strangers' houses, begs the gods within the grove to harbor him— Come, my son!" "Yes, they have hurt me;" "yet I'd have blotted it from memory— but they've hurt you?" "Ha!" "Then all this nameless lot should go to hell!" "And may they die a creeping death, and for their dirge the priestly raven's song!" "Because the wolves assemble there where corpses are, let one find its way to them, to gorge itself on blood and gore, thereby to purify" "Sicily of them." "Arid looms the land where once the purple grape did flourish for a better people, and golden fruit in shady grove, and noble grain;" "and one day a stranger will inquire as he treads upon the ashes of your temples where your city once stood?" "Now go!" "You'll find me in one hour nevermore.— Critias!" "To you I'll say but one word more." "Then let me meanwhile go to my aged father and bid him farewell." "But why?" "What did the young man do to you, you gods?" "Go then, poor boy!" "I'll wait outside the city, on the path to Syracuse;" "we'll wander there together." "What is it?" "So you too persecute me?" "Why ask me that?" "I know full well!" "You'd dearly love to hate me, yet hate me you do not:" "you merely fear;" "yet you had naught to fear." "It's over." "What can you want now?" "You did not yourself concoct this scheme;" "the priest compelled you by his own will;" "do not accuse yourself." "If only you had said a true word for the boy;" "you faltered before the people." "Did you have nothing else to say to me?" "Superfluous chatter was ever your first love." "Oh, speak softly I saved your daughter's life." "You did do that." "You bristle and you feel ashamed to speak with one our fatherland has cursed;" "this I do believe of you." "Imagine that it is my shade now talking, returned in honour from the blessed Land of Peace—" "I'd not have come in answer to your call, had not the people wished to know what else you had to say." "The thing I have to say to you means nothing to the people." "What is it then?" "You must depart from Sicily;" "I tell you this for her, your daughter's, sake." "Think about yourself and have no care for others." "Do you not know her?" "Is it beyond your ken to know how very much it's better for a city full of fools to perish than for one outstanding one to fail?" "You think because you'll not be here no good can happen in our land?" "Do you not know her?" "And tamper like a blind man with the gift the gods bestowed on you?" "And that bright light within your walls illuminates in vain?" "I tell you openly:" "captive to a nation such as this a pious life will find no rest;" "with all her beauty, hers will be a lonely life;" "she'll die deprived of joy;" "for never will this tender earnest daughter of the gods take barbarians to heart." "What should I say to that?" "Depart with her, to a consecrated land, to Elis or to Delos, where dwell the folk for whom she pines so lovingly" "and where, all silently assembled, images of heroes stand free within the laurel wood." "There she'll rest;" "among the silent idols will her beautiful, gentle and sober sense be nurtured;" "the noble shades will soothe her pain, which she has locked away" "within her reverent breast." "When on that feast day the handsome youths of Hellas gather, and life, on all sides joyous, full of hope," "surrounds her silent heart, a cloud of gold, the dawn will also stir to joy this pious maid who loves to dream;" "and she will choose among the best of youths whose hymns and wreathes were won in fair contest, that he may lead her from the shadows" "that all too soon became her sole companions." "If it should please you, obey me." "Have you in your distress so many golden words to spare?" "You must not mock!" "Departing spirits happily rejuvenate once more." "The look of dying men is but the fading of the light which, once joyous in its force, shone all about you." "Let it be extinguished in equanimity;" "if I have cursed you, may your child receive my blessing, if blessings I may give." "Let that be, don't treat me like a boy!" "Then promise me, and do what I've advised, abandon this poor land." "If you refuse that lonely girl may beg until an eagle swoop and snatch her from the rabble to ethereal heights." "I can think of nothing better." "Oh, tell me then, have we not done you justice?" "Why are you asking now?" "I have forgiven you." "But will you now obey?" "So quick my choice can never be." "Choose well, then;" "she should not stay where she will perish;" "and tell her to remember him who once was beloved of all the gods." "Will you do that?" "Why do you ask?" "I shall." "And now set out upon your way, you wretched man!" "Yes!" "I shall go my way, Critias," "And do you know where to?" "I'm ashamed to say that I've delayed to the extreme." "What was I waiting for, for so long, till fortune, spirit, and my youth had passed and nothing but absurdity remained, and misery.— Not even" "my fair cottage have they left me— this too I lose, gods!" "You're leaving, lord?" "Indeed, I'm leaving, my good–" "So fetch me please my travel gear, as much as I myself can carry;" "and take it for me out there into the street— for this will be your final service!" "O gods!" "You always were so happy in my company, familiar to me from sweet youth on, when we grew up together in this house, my father's house, now mine, and always foreign to my breast has been the master's icy word." "The fate of cruel slavery you've never had to feel." "This I believe of you, you'd gladly follow me wherever I must go." "Yet I cannot allow the priest's fell curse to cause you pain." "You know him, do you not?" "The world's opened up for you and me, my children;" "now each of us must seek his own best fortune—" "Oh, no!" "We will not leave you, cannot leave you." "If we belong to you, then let us stay with you!" "It's much more than a day or two that we have been united, you told us that yourself." "O gods!" "No child have I, I live alone with just these three, and yet I cleave to this unprepossessing place as though entranced," "am I somnambulant, struggling as in dreams to escape?" "It cannot be otherwise, good friends!" "No more to speak of it I beg you now, and let us act as though we are no more ourselves." "I'll grudge the priest his pleasure in cursing everyone who loves me— you will not go with me, I tell you now." "Go in the house and take the best things you can find and don't delay; then flee, for if you don't the new lords of the house will capture you and you'll be servants to a milksop." "With these hard words you send us on our way?" "For your and my sakes— emancipated friends!" "With manly force you must direct your lives; may the gods console and honour you; you only now begin to live." "Some people now are passing by." "No more malingering!" "But do what I have said." "Lord of my heart!" "Live, and do not go down!" "But tell us, will we not see you again?" "Oh, do not ask;" "it is in vain." "Alas!" "A beggar now, he'll drift around the country, and will his life be always insecure?" "Farewell!" "I've been too brusque in sending you away;" "farewell, my faithful friends!" "And you, paternal house, where I grew up and blossomed!" "—Beloved trees!" "Consecrated by my joyous hymns," "I, the friend of gods, reposeful friends of my repose!" "Now die and give the breezes back your life, for now the vulgar folk will dawdle in your shade and where I walked felicitous they'll mock;" "Woe!" "You gods!" "I'm exiled, and did the priest, without vocation, imitate soullessly what you have done to me, celestial ones?" "You left me stranded here, for I belittled you, beloved ones!" "And he deprives me now of my dear homeland and his curse reverberates." "Did I lay it on my wretched self, the rabble but reflecting it?" "Alas!" "Who once lived intimate with you, the blessed ones, and called the world his in joy;" "he has no place to sleep, nor in himself a site of sweet repose." "So, whither now, you mortal paths?" "Becalm yourself, dear child!" "And cease all wailing!" "Lest we be heard." "Here's the house;" "I'll go in." "He may still be there and you will get to see him once again." "But meanwhile do keep quiet— do I really dare go in there?" "Oh, do so, Delia dear." "I'll pray meanwhile for calm, so that my heart won't fail when in this bitter hour of fate I look upon the lofty man." "O Panthea!" "I cannot!" "— Ah, it would even be a sin were I to muster equanimity." "He is cursed?" "I cannot grasp it, and you, you dark enigma, may well deracinate my senses!" "How will he be?" "What's happened?" "Alas!" "All is dead and barren." "Gone?" "I fear it." "The doors gape open, but no one's to be seen inside." "I called, I heard only the echo of my voice in the house;" "I couldn't stay a moment longer—" "Alas!" "She stands there mute and pale, as though she doesn't know me, poor girl." "Don't you recognise me anymore?" "I'll bear this with you, dear heart!" " Now!" "You must come!" " Where to?" "Where to?" "Alas, that," "I do not know, of course, you gentle gods!" "Woe!" "No hope!" "And do you shine on me so uselessly, golden light above?" "He is gone;" "this lonely one can find no reason why her eyes should still perceive the light." "It cannot be, no!" "The deed is far too insolent, too hideous, and all of you have done it." "Must I still live, within this crowd, and acquiesce?" "Woe and weeping!" "To all that's happened lamentation is my sole reply!" "Oh!" "Then weep!" "It does more good than silence or mere chatter." "Delia!" "There he would go walking!" "And his garden meant so much to me, as it was his." "Ah, oft when life would treat me badly, and I, unfit for company, despairing of all others, would roam our hills, I'd look this way and see" "the crowns of those green trees, and think, there is someone still!" "And my soul took wing on thoughts of him— Alas!" "How cruelly they've destroyed my icon, tossed it in the street," "I never would have thought it possible." "So shameful!" "Oh, wither away now all you flowers you shining stars of heaven, for he too once was glistening— all that's mortal must go down" "Alas!" "A century of springtime I often wished," "I was so foolish!" "For him and for his gardens!" "Oh, could you not allow her then to keep this tender joy, you good gods?" "Is this all that you can say?" "Like a new sun, he came to us, and shone and drew unripened life most amiably on golden ribbons to himself, and long had Sicily anticipated him." "There never ruled on this fair isle a mortal such as he;" "the people knew that he was one who dwelled with all the tutelary spirits of the world, replete of soul!" "You took them all into your heart, woe!" "Must you now on that account be stigmatised and drift from land to land with poison in your breast, their endowment to you?" "You did this to him!" "Oh, let me not, you judges wise, escape unscathed." "I honour him, and if this be unknown to you then I must throw it in your face, that I as well may be ejected from the city," "and if the raving man put him under curse, my father, ha!" "Then let him lay that curse on me." "O Panthea, it terrifies me when you thus exaggerate your keen." "Is he that way as well, does he too nourish his proud spirit on pain, and when he suffers most does he lash out?" "I won't believe it's so, for if it is, I am afraid." "What might he then resolve to do?" "Would you cause me anguish?" "Yet what have I just said?" "I won't go on— yes, patient will I be, you gods, will never again in vain strive for what you've taken from me, and what you deign to give, that I will accept." "You holy man!" "If I can find you nowhere, then at least I'll smile to know that once you were here." "I'll find repose, for if my senses be deranged his image will escape me; and my only wish is that the day's alarms won't chase away the shade that is my brother, the shade that guides me where I softly go." "You dreamer, dear to me!" "He's still alive, you know." "Alive?" "Of course!" "He lives!" "He walks across vast fields all night and day." "His roof is joined by tempest clouds, upon the soil he finds his bed." "Rude winds assail his hair and raindrops weep their tears upon his face;" "his clothes dry out again beneath the burning sun;" "at hot midday he trudges on the shadeless sands." "Familiar paths he does not take;" "in cliffs, with those who live by seizing booty, estranged, like him, and ever suspect, that's where he hides, his curse they do not know" "They offer him what meagre food they've cooked, to fuel his limbs for further wandering." "Thus he lives!" "Woe!" "And even that's unsure!" "Yes!" "It is terrible, Panthea." "Terrible, you say?" "You poor girl, perhaps it won't be long you will console me on the day they come to tell the news and share the talk that he lies dead upon the road." "The gods will be unconcerned;" "for they kept still when shame was heaped upon his head and he was driven from his home in squalor." "O you!" "How will you end?" "Already you are weary, you thrash upon the ground, proud eagle!" "You paint your path with blood, and if one among the craven hunters finds you crushed upon the rocks he'll dash your dying head" "and people say that you were once the favourite of Jove?" "Alas, you sweet and lovely soul!" "Do not go on this way!" "No more such talk!" "If you but knew the care that seizes me for you!" "I'll drop upon my knees and plead with you if that will help." "Becalm yourself." "For we must leave now." "Yet many things may change, Panthea." "The people may regret their deed." "You know how much they loved him." "Come!" "I'll go to see your father, and you shall help in this as well." "Perhaps we'll win him over." "Oh, we shall!" "We'll do it, you good gods!" "How are you faring?" "Oh, how good it is to hear you say a word, dear friend— don't you agree?" "Up here the curse is not enforced, our native land lies far behind," "upon these heights we're free to breathe—" "The holy mountain will grant his rest to guests who are displaced from home." "If you agree, we will reside awhile here in this cottage— should I call to them, in case they should refuse to grant us refuge?" "Do try— already they are coming out." "What are you looking for?" "The road is down below." "We beg you, grant us refuge in your home;" "do not be shocked by our appearance, my good man." "Our path is hard and often one who suffers seems to others suspect—May the gods relate to you what sort we are." "It's clear you've fallen on hard times of late;" "that I surely do believe." "And yet the city is not far off; surely there you've got a friend." "You'll find more comfort there than with a stranger." "Alas!" "A friend and host would sooner be ashamed of us were we to come to him in our misfortune;" "it wouldn't be without good payment for a stranger, were he to meet our meagre needs." "Where have you come from?" "What need to know?" "We'll pay with gold, you'll be our host." "Gold may open many doors, but not mine." "What do you mean?" "But give us bread and wine;" "we'll pay what you demand." "You'll find these things much better elsewhere." "Oh, that is harsh!" "Perhaps you'll grant me then a strip of gauze to bind the bleeding feet of my dear friend;" "the stony paths have wounded him— just look at him!" "He's Sicily's good spirit worth more than princes are!" "And there he stands before your door, blanched with care, and begging cottage shade and humble bread, and you refuse him?" "Stranded, exhausted, and thirsty, here outside on this hot day, when even hardy beasts seek out a cave where solar fire does not blaze." "I recognise you." "Woe!" "Accursed ones of Agrigent." "I sensed it from the start." "Begone!" "By the Thunderer, we will not go!" "— This farmer must assure me of your safety, holy friend!" "While I go out and search for food." "Rest against this tree and listen, you!" "If harm befalls this man, from any hand at all," "I'll steal upon you in the night and burn you out before you wake, your straw house all in flames!" "Think it over!" "Dispel your cares, my son!" "How can you tell me that?" "Your life is worth my loving care!" "And this one thinks it nothing injuring a man on whom a curse was laid, the malediction on us both;" "and his desire could goad him on to kill that man, if only for his cloak;" "it seems to him unfitting such a man should go free among the living." "Aren't you aware of that?" "Oh, yes, I am aware." "You say it with a smile?" "O Empedocles!" "Faithful heart," "I've wounded you." "I never would have done so." "Ah, it's only my impatience." "Becalm yourself!" "For my sake, calm." "Soon all this will pass." "Say you so?" "You will observe." "How are you?" "Should I search the fields for food?" "If not, I'll stay here, dear friend, or maybe we should first head into the hills, seeking there a place for us to stay." "Look over there!" "Mirroring the light, a spring;" "it is our very own." "Take" "Your hollow gourd and fetch a draft to freshen my parched soul." "Clear and cool it gushes forth from our dark earth, Father!" "First you drink, then draw again and bring me some." "The gods will bless it for you." "I drink to you!" "You ancient friends of mine!" "To you, my gods!" "And to my recurrence, Nature!" "Already it is otherwise." "O you goodly ones!" "You shall precede, and when I come you will be there." "all must bloom before it grows and ripens!" "—" "Be still, my son!" "And heed we'll speak no more of all that has transpired." "You are transformed and now your eye is glistening as in victory." "I do not understand." "We'll want to be like boys again, together all the day, with endless talk in company." "It won't be hard to find some shade, we are at home, where faithful, long-familiar friends without a care can share congenial conversation—" "my favourite!" "We have, like little boys who share a bunch of grapes, in lovely moments so often eaten to our hearts' content and, yes, you had to join me in this place" "that of our solemn celebrations not a single one would suffer our neglect, be lost to us;" "indeed, you had to pay a heavy price in pains, and yet I too must pay them recompense." "Oh, tell me all, that I like you find joy." "Have you not seen?" "They are recurring the lovely times of my entire life again today and something greater still is to come; then upward, son, to the very peak of ancient holy Etna, that is where" "we'll go, for gods have greater presence on the heights" "With my own eyes this very day I shall survey the streams and islands and the sea." "And may the sunlight, hovering golden over all these waters, deign to bless me in departure, the splendid youthful light of day, which in my youth I loved." "Then all about us both eternal stars will scintillate in silence as, the glowing magma surges from volcanic depths and tenderly the all-impelling spirit of the ether will arrive and touch us." "Oh, then!" "You terrify me with these words, I do not comprehend you." "Your look gives cheer, your speech is splendid," "And yet I'd rather see you mourning." "Alas!" "Humiliation burns within your ardent breast, you've suffered it and deem yourself a nothing though you are much." "O gods!" "He too now in the end denies me my tranquillity and rowels my mind with unconsidered speech." "If that's your will, then leave." "By death and life, this is not the hour for words expended on what I suffer and what I am." "That's all been laid to rest;" "I'll hear no more." "Have I deserved this?" "I can easily forgive your ill-timed reminders; it is but the priest who haunts your eye, and in your ear the rabble's mocking cry still rings," "fraternal keen that kept us company as we abandoned our beloved city." "Ha!" "I say— by all the gods who see me here they'd not have dared do this to me were I my former self." "What?" "Humiliation!" "That any day of all my days should now betray me to these cowards— silence!" "Let it all be buried deep below, so deep as no mortal matter ever was interred." "Alas!" "I've carelessly disquieted his cheerful heart that lordly heart, and now his cares are greater than before." "Let your lament now cease and do not plague me further;" "in time all is annealed for gods and mortals both" "Soon I'll be reconciled, nay, already I am." "Can this be?" "— Can the dismal melancholy be healed, and do you feel no longer isolated and poor, you lofty man, and do you think that human deeds are innocent, mere hearth flames?" "For this you taught me once;" "is it true once more?" "Behold!" "Then I will bless this crystal fount at which your brand new life commenced for you and on the morrow happily we'll clamber down to" "the sea; to safer shores the tide will carry us;" "what matter all the toils and perils of our trip, our spirit is cheerful!" "Pausanias, o child!" "Do not forget this one lesson, no mortal ever finds a thing that's free of cost." "And only one thing helps.— O my heroic lad!" "Do not go pale, observe my former happiness, beyond all thought, for it restores the unimaginable," "my divine youth, even as I wilt;" "my cheeks are full of roses;" "things cannot be so vile." "Go, my son?" "I cannot betray my mind and my desire willingly—" "This is not for you— so do not try to own it, and leave it here for me, as I leave yours to you." "What is it now?" "A crowd of people!" "Climbing up toward us." "And do you recognise them?" "I can't believe my eyes!" "What?" "Shall I go mad again?" "What?" "shall I go down in senseless woe and grief, down to where I would go peacefully?" "They are Agrigentians." "Impossible!" "Do I dream?" "It is my exalted rival, the priest, along with all his ilk!" "Fi!" "I can't be healed of wounds I carried from my fight with them;" "have you not all forgiven me for being good to you?" "Nor can I forgive myself." "Advance, you piteous specimens, if you must." "In wrath as well I can proceed unto my gods." "How will all this end?" "Of naught take fright!" "Don't let the voices of the men upset you, the ones who banished you." "For they forgive you." "You shameless ones!" "Is this all you know to do?" "What do you want of me?" "You know me!" "You are the ones who branded me." "Yet do the lifeless people want their persecution to be felt?" "And have they not humiliated him enough, the one whom once they feared?" "They seek him out again to take their minds' refreshment in his pain?" "You've paid the price for all your crimes; enough of suffering, I can see it in your countenance;" "Be well again and do return to us;" "you'll be received by these good folk in their dear homeland once again." "Ha!" "If I had nothing better in the offing I would live deprived of tongue, savage in the mountain wilds, in rainstorm and in scorching sun, forced to share my food with animals, before I would return to your blind mummery." "So this is how you thank us?" "Oh, say that once again while gazing upward if you can, upward to this light" "which gazes down upon all things!" "Why did you not stay far away, why insist on insolence, appearing now before my eyes and forcing me to say my final word that it might take you by the hand to Acheron;" "what have you done?" "What did I ever do to you?" "You were admonished;" "for many days your hands were chained by fear, and long festered your rancor in its bonds, my spirit holding it prisoner." "Could you find no rest, and did my life inspire such grief in you?" "For more than thirst and hunger does the nobler gall the baser;" "could you find no calm?" "You had to risk attacking me, you shapeless heap of misery?" "You must have thought I'd be like you if only with your own shame you painted my entire face, that was a stupid thought, my man!" "Were you to pour your poison in a cup and hand it up to me you'd never share in my beloved spirit;" "it would purge you with the purged blood that you had desecrated." "In vain." "We travel separate roads." "Die your vulgar death, it's only fitting, with the feelings of a soulless knave;" "to me another lot has fallen;" "another path you gods once prophesied when I was born" "For you were present then— you surely grasp that!" "Ah!" "Your work is done, and your brambles will not entangle my great joy." "I cannot understand the lunatic at all." "Enough, Hermocrates!" "You'll only drive into a rage the one who's been humiliated." "Yet tell me why you bring along a cloying priest, you fools, when you mean to do some good?" "And why choose as conciliator the god-abandoned one who cannot love;" "for quarrel and for death are he and all his kind sown upon the fields of life, and never for peace!" "You see now, this is so;" "why not then years ago!" "So many things in Agrigent would never have befallen." "You've done so much, Hermocrates;" "your whole life long you've banished pleasures by making mortals anxious." "So many child heroes, helpless in their cribs, you've suffocated;" "like a flowering field youthful, forceful Nature slumped and died by your scythe." "Much I saw myself and much more I have heard." "When a nation is to die the Furies send one man alone who through deception lures the vital human beings to commit his evil deeds." "And in the end, his skills well honed, the sly asphyxiator, holier than thou, attacks his man." "It works heartrendingly well because the godlike man will fall before the meanest." "My Empedocles!" "— you shall go your way, the way you've chosen." "I cannot stop you, my blood evaporates in my scorched veins." "Yet this man who has shamed you, this fell corruptor, I'll seek him out, when you've abandoned me, he'll have to face me, I know his very element." "I'll drag him to the fetid swamp— and if he begs and whimpers for his life I'll show the sort of mercy to his hoary head that he has shown to others." "Down he'll go!" "You hear me?" "I'll keep my word!" "No need to wait, Pausanias!" "Fellow citizens!" "Still wagging that long tongue?" "You!" "It's you who's ruined us, you robbed us of our very senses with your gab; you stole from us the love of a demigod!" "He is no longer that." "He does not know us anymore;" "alas!" "He looked upon us once with gentle eyes, this kinglike man;" "the way he spurns us now defeats my heart." "Woe!" "If only we were living still in Saturn's age, like those of old, thriving under friendly heights," "and each found joy within his house and was satisfied." "Why did you call upon our heads his inexorable curse, the curse he's laid on us, alas!" "He had to do it;" "and now our sons will say when they've grown up that we're the ones who killed the man the gods once sent." "He weeps!" "—" "Oh, greater still, more loving than before, he seems to me." "And you still strive against him, standing there as though you cannot see;" "you do not fall upon your knees before him?" "On the ground, man!" "And still you play false idol?" "And you'd dearly like to carry on this way?" "Drop before me!" "I'll plant my foot upon the nape of your frail neck, until you tell us that you've finally lied your way" "down to the very verge of Tartarus!" "Do you not know what you have done?" "Better to desecrate a temple than to do what you have done, ha!" "We worshiped him, and we were right to do so;" "with him we would have been as free as gods are free, but then along you came, unwelcome as a plague, your evil spirit dwelled among us;" "deprived of heart and word and all the joy he had bestowed on us, we fell in loathsome tumult." "Shame!" "For shame!" "Like lunatics we raved when you condemned to death this best beloved man." "It cannot be undone;" "were you to die deaths sevenfold you never could undo what you have done to him and us." "The sun inclines to westward now, and I must travel farther on, my children." "Let the priest be!" "Too long now we've been quarreling." "What's happened will all pass; in times to come we'll let our fellows live in peace." "Is all then equal in its worth?" "Oh, love us once again!" "Do come and live in Agrigent." "A Roman friend has told us that their Numa is what made them great." "Come, divine man!" "Be our Numa." "A long time now we have been thinking that you should be our king." "Do!" "Accept!" "I'll be the first to hail you, and we all want it." "The time of kings has passed forever." "Who are you, man?" "Thus are crowns declined, you citizens." "I cannot grasp the words that you have said, Empedocles." "does she protect within the nest her brood forever, the eagle?" "Were they still blind she'd let the fledglings slumber 'neath her wing, the poor unfeathered ones, their dim life lived in twilight." "Yet once they've seen the light of day and once their pinions have grown strong, she flings them from their cradle, so that they will undertake their own flight." "Shame on you," "That you should still want kings." "You are too old;" "your fathers' times were different." "You can't be helped if you won't help yourselves." "Forgive!" "By all the heavenly gods!" "You are a great man, that we have betrayed!" "It was an evil day that came our way, Archon." "Forgive, and come with us!" "For you the sun of your dear homeland shines more brightly than it does elsewhere, and if you will not wield the sceptre you deserve, we still have many gifts and honours for you." "For wreaths we have green leaves and winning names." "For statues, never-aging bronze." "Oh, come!" "Our young folk, the pure, who never did insult you, will serve you—if you'll just dwell in our vicinity" "that will be enough;" "we must forbear if you decide you will avoid us, lingering in your garden all alone until you have forgotten what we did to you." "Oh, not again!" "You light of my dear homeland, you who raised me, you gardens of my youth and my joy, once more I am to dwell on you, you days of honour, when I lived a pure" "unspoiled life with these my people." "We're reconciled, good friends!" "— Leave me now," "It would be best if you would never look again upon the face of him you have rebuked;" "remember him, the man you loved;" "your minds, now clarified, will never more be led astray." "My image lives with you in youth that never ends and your hymns of joy, that you promised me, will ring out more brilliantly when I am far away—" "Oh, let us part, lest foolishness and dotage still divide us;" "it seems we have been warned;" "we shall be one who at the fitting time, by dint of their own power, chose the hour of their parting." "You leave us here befuddled?" "You offered me a crown, you good men!" "For that, receive from me whatever's holy in me." "I've long been saving it." "In brilliant nights, when overhead the universe disclosed itself, and when the holy air of night, with all its stars, as one spirit surrounded me with joyous thoughts," "then I often felt in me a burgeoning vitality;" "at break of day" "I found the words to tell you, earnest words, long held back." "And full of happiness I called, impetuous for the golden clouds of morn to rise out of the Orient and celebrate their feast anew, at which my lonely song, with you in festive chorus, would sound." "But then my heart would always close again, hoping for its own time, within me, that should ripen." "This day is my autumnal day, the fruit is falling by itself." "Oh, had he only spoken sooner in this way, perhaps these evil things would never have befallen him." "I do not leave you stripped of counsel, my dear friends!" "Fear nothing!" "The earth's children always shrink from the new and strange;" "restricted in what is their own, they care only for survival, and their senses do not take them farther down life's path." "Yet in the end the anxious ones will be exposed and, dying, each return to its own element, that it may find rejuvenation, as though luxuriating in a bath's refreshment." "On human life the grand desire is" "Bestowed that it rejuvenate itself." "And from the purifying death that they themselves will choose, upon a time propitious, will rise, Achilles from the Styx, the nations." "Oh, give yourselves to Nature, before she takes you!" "—" "For you have thirsted long for things unfamiliar, and as though imprisoned in a sickly body the spirit of Agrigent is yearning now to slough off the old ways." "So, dare it!" "Your inheritance, what you've earned and learned, the narratives of all your fathers' voices teaching you, all law and custom, names of all the ancient gods, forget these things courageously;" "like newborn babes your eyes will open to the godliness of Nature, and then your spirit will take flame from the light of heaven, sweet breath of life will then suffuse your breast anew," "and forests full of golden fruits will sway beneath the wind, and springs will jet from rocks, when the world's life, her spirit of peace, embraces you;" "she'll nurse your soul and calm you with a blessed lullaby;" "and from the velvet twilight of delight the green of earth will glisten once again" "and mountains, and seas, and clouds, and stars, the noble forces, all heroic brothers bound to you, will then appear before your eyes, that your breast, like a warrior, will clamor mightily for deeds," "and in your own beautiful world, extend your hands, give the word and share the good." "Oh then dear friends— partake of deeds and fame, like faithful Dioscuri;" "each will be the equal of the others— like slender statues in repose your new life will come to rest on well-conceived arrangements, and letting law tie confederate bonds." "You tutelary spirits of our all-transforming" "Nature!" "Then, you cheerful ones, you who take your joy in heights and depths, however toil and luck and sun and rain may befall the heart of mortals in their narrow quarters, you will invite from all the far-flung corners of the world" "the liberated peoples to the celebrated festival, for mortals then will donate lovingly their very best;" "no form of servitude will cramp and crush the breast—" "O Father!" "Earth, again you will receive the heart's full nomination, and like the flowers shooting from the dark recesses in you" "the glowing faces of the grateful then will spring smilingly from hearts that are abundant in their life." "And then, crowned with wreaths of love, the fount will flow, rushing downward, swelling full of blessings to the stream," "and with the echo of its quaking banks the sound will wax most worthy of you, Father Ocean;" "encomia will rise again from free delight." "The human genius then will feel affinities celestial" "O sun god!" "With you, will feel them anew and what it shapes will be both yours and all its own, with pleasure and with courage, full of life, deeds will come as easily to it as rays to you," "and splendid things will die in mute and mournful breast no more." "It often slumbers like a noble grain of seed, the mortal heart encased in its dead husk, until its time has come;" "the breath of ether there surrounds it ever lovingly, and soaring with the eagles their eye imbibes the morning light;" "yet there are no blessings for the dreamers, precious little of the nectar that the gods of Nature offer every day will go to nurture creatures caught in slumber." "Until they tire of toil in coiling bonds, remembering now its origins, goes out in search of living beauty, and happily unfolds upon the presence of the pure," "then a new day sparks the sky!" "To they are this!" "The ones we so long did without, the living, the goodly gods." "Farewell!" "It was a mortal's word, and they tell true who never will recur." "Where to?" "Oh, by the living Olympus, the gods you finally revealed to this old man, to this blind man before you, do not abandon us." "For only if you should abide will the people prosper, a new soul permeating branch and fruit." "Let others speak on my behalf when I am far away, the flowers of the sky, the blossoms of the stars and all those who bud from the earth by the thousands;" "divinely present Nature needs no speech and never will she leave you solitary, if but once she has drawn near." "For inextinguishable is the moment that is hers;" "and with her, victorious throughout the ages, bestowing blessings from above, fire celestial." "And when the glorious days of Saturn come, the new, more manly days, then think of times gone by, and live a life warmed by the genius of your fathers' sayings once again!" "Celebrating with you, as though invited by the canticle of vernal light, the all-forgotten world of heroes rises from the realm of shades," "and with the golden clouds of mourning may your memories be gathered, joyful ones, about you.—" "They were!" "And you?" "And you?" "Alas, I will not call it by its name before these most fortunate people here, that never may they guess what is about to happen," "No!" "You cannot do it." "Such wishes!" "You're all children, you still would like to know what's comprehensible, and what's right;" "you are mistaken!" "Speaking, foolishly, to a power that is greater than you are, though clearly it's no use to do so and as the stars roll on unstoppable, thus life rolls along the path to its accomplishment." "You do not hear the voice of gods?" "Whereas I, before" "I learned, through listening, the language of my parents, with my initial breath, in my primordial vision, already I was hearkening to that voice, and always" "I thought it higher than the human word." "Upward!" "They called out to me and every breeze incited mightily the agonising longing in me, and if I wanted still to tarry here a moment more, it would be as though the growing boy, already in his awkward years," "still played the games of childhood." "Ha!" "Soulless as a knave I drifted hereabout in night and shame before you and my gods." "I've lived;" "as from the crowns of trees the pollen sprinkles downward and the golden fruit" "and flower and grain pour forth from darksome earth, thus came from toil and need my joy to me, and heaven's friendly forces then descended;" "they were but one delight whenever I reflected on this wondrous life, and then with all my heart I prayed and begged the gods for this alone:" "as soon as I could not sustain my holy happiness in youthful strength, beyond all tumult, and when like all the former favourites of heaven my spirit's plenitude became my folly, to send a warning, dispatching swiftly to my heart" "an unexpected envoy as a sign the time of cleansing now had come, that when the hour was right I" "might save myself in new and youthful vigor that in the midst of human beings this friend of gods would not become a plaything, oaf, and nuisance." "they kept their promise;" "mightily I have been warned, just once, it was enough." "For if I failed to understand I'd be a common sort of steed that honours not the spur— and waits upon the goading whip instead." "Do not therefore demand the swift return of him who once did love you, though a stranger in your midst, born to live a brief life" "Oh, do not ask that this man put at risk his holiness, his very soul, for mortals!" "A lovely parting has been granted us today and in the end I still could give to you my love's best," "my very heart, with all my heart." "Therefore and forever, no!" "Why should I abide with you?" "We need your counsel." "Then ask of this young man!" "And do not be ashamed." "From spirits that are fresh emerge the wisest things," "Provided that one asks about important things in earnest." "Remember that a freshet granted to the priestess, the ancient Pythia, the sayings of the gods." "And young men are themselves your gods.—" "My favourite!" "I'm glad to step aside;" "may you survive me;" "I was the morning mist, adrift and transitory!" "And while" "I blossomed all alone, the world slumbered;" "yet you, you have been born to brilliant daylight." "Oh!" "I must be still!" "Do not convince yourself, best of men, and us with you." "For me, all is darkness to my eyes and I cannot descry what you are undertaking, cannot say, stay!" "Postpone it for a day." "The moment often comes and seizes us amazingly;" "thus we pass on, as fleeting ones caught up in fleeting moments." "Our pleasure of an hour often feels as though we'd planned it over time, and yet it's but the hour itself that dazzles us, and we see only it in everything that's past." "Forgive me!" "I would not spurn the spirit of the mightier man, no, not today;" "I see it well, and I must let you be, can look on merely, even if within my soul the cares are mounting,—" "No!" "Oh, no!" "—" "He shall not go to foreign lands, he shall not cross the sea to Hellas' shores nor to the coast of Egypt, to brothers who have long not seen him, beg him, oh, beg him to abide!" "I sensed it, for this man radiates some things that make me tremble for my life, sacred, terrifying things," "and all grows luminous in me and then goes dim again, more now than in my former days— you see and serve a fate that is your own, a fate that is magnificent, and gladly do you bear it, your thoughts are lordly." "Yet also think on those who love you, the pure, and also on the others, those who failed you, the rueful ones." "You, generous man, have given us so much;" "what will life be like without you?" "Oh, bestow on us the presence of your self for just a little longer, kindly man!" "Oh, sweet ingratitude!" "I surely gave enough for you to live on." "You're allowed to live as long as you draw breath;" "not I. The one through whom the spirit speaks must part betimes." "Divine as Nature is, she oft reveals herself divinely through humanity, and only thus does our ever-probing race come to know of her again." "This mortal, he whose heart she's filled with sheer delight, has faithfully announced her;" "oh, let her now destroy the vessel so that it may never serve some other use and turn divinity into mere human work." "Allow the most felicitous of human beings to die before they fall to self-aggrandisement, frivolity, and shame;" "let free humanity, upon the fitting hour, offer loving sacrifice unto the gods." "This is mine." "And well I know my lot." "And for the longest time upon the youthful day I've prophesied it to myself" "Do honour me in this." "And if tomorrow you should fail to find me, say:" "he was not to wane by ticking off the days, he was not to be a slave to care and illness, unseen he went his way, no human had interred him, and no eye has seen his ashes," "for nothing else was fitting for the man before whose face, upon that holy day, and at the mortally propitious hour, divinity dropped the veil—" "Woe!" "He is implacable, and one's heart would feel ashamed to say another word to him." "Come, give me your hands, Critias!" "And all of you, your hands.— You, my best beloved, stay awhile with me, you ever-faithful youth, accompany your friend until the evening." "Do not mourn!" "For holy is my end, and even now—o air!" "You, air, embrace this newborn when upward he traverses unseen paths;" "I catch your scent as does the mariner who nears the forest blossoms of the mother isle," "already his breast breathes more affectionately and the memory of his first delights transfigures his aged face!" "My soul is full of blessings, friends!" "Now go and greet the city that's our home and all its fields!" "On that fair day when you go out into the sacred grove to bring a feast to all the gods of Nature," "and when with friendly birdsong you are received on cheerful heights," "then wafting a strain of me in that song, your friend's word sounding, veiled in loving chorus by our harmonious world— this, you loving ones, you will hear," "and it is more splendid thus." "What I have said while tarrying here is of little worth, yet may a ray of light illuminate your path and guide you downward to the silent source, that it may bless you as it permeates the twilit clouds." "And may you then remember me!" "Blessed one!" "You've overcome me, holy man!" "I'll honour what befalls you, and I'll not give it a name." "Did it have to be this way?" "It happened all too fast." "While you were dwelling still in Agrigent, and ruling there discreetly, we paid no heed." "You're taken from us now;" "we had no chance to think." "Joy comes and goes, does not belong to mortals as their own, and spirit hastens out along its path before the world can ask a question." "Alas, can we ever even say you dwelt upon a time among us?" "It is accomplished;" "now send me too from hence!" "It should be easy for you!" "Not so!" "I know full well, I should not speak this way to you, the holy stranger;" "yet I would not restrain the heart within my breast." "You have spoiled that heart, you've drawn it to yourself— and is it to the likes of me, I thought when I was just a boy, this splendid man" "inclines; can he be truly drawn to me in friendly conversation, though by then the man's words were long-familiar to me;" "it's all gone now!" "Gone!" "O Empedocles!" "And still I call you by your name, still I grip the faithful hand of him who flees." "Behold!" "I am still here, it's me and me alone, as though you could not leave me, loving one!" "You spirit of my happy youth, did you embrace me then in vain, have I in vain unfolded all this heart of mine in hopes of victory and grandest expectations?" "I know you no more; it is a dream." "I don't believe it." "Did you not understand?" "My heart I understand, for true and proud it beats and burns for yours." "So grant what honours most my own heart." "Is honour found in death alone?" "You've heard it, and your own soul testifies to me; for me there are no others." "Alas!" "Is it then true?" "What do you take me for?" "Son of Urania!" "How can you ask?" "Yet am I a knave, shall I survive the day of my dishonour?" "No!" "By your enchanting spirit, man, I would not" "I could not spurn you, even if love's neediness compelled me now to do so, my beloved!" "Then, die if this must be, die and thus bear witness." "I knew you'd not deprive me of your joy the moment when you had to let me go, courageous one!" "For where is sorrow?" "Wreathing round your head are dawn's vermilion clouds, and once again your eye bestows on me its energetic rays." "And I, I kiss sweet promises upon your lips, and say you will be mighty," "you will shine, your youthful flame will spark everything that's mortal to soul and flame" "that with you it may rise to holy ether." "Yes, beloved!" "It's not in vain I've lived with you;" "beneath a soothing sky so many joys have bloomed for us alone, and from our first victorious and golden moment;" "and often will my silent grove and empty halls remind you of these joys when you pass by in springtime, and the spirit that once joined us, you and me, will surround you;" "thank it then, thank it now!" "O son!" "Son of my soul!" "Father!" "My thanksgiving will come as soon as all the bitterness is lifted from me." "Yet that thanks too is lovelier, which, like parting joy, itself will tarry in the parting." "Oh, must then joy depart?" "I do not grasp it." "And you?" "What would it help you?" "Compelled by mortals I am not;" "in full force I go down, and fearlessly;" "I tread the path I have elected;" "this is my felicity and my prerogative." "Let that go!" "You still breathe, you stand, you gaze, the world about is bright, your eye is clear as you encounter all the gods." "The sky reposes there on your free brow, and more joyously than all the radiant joys of humankind your tutelary spirit, splendid friend, illuminates the earth!" "And all of this should pass away?" "Pass away?" "But it's enduring, like the stream the frost has fettered." "Silly boy!" "Does the holy spirit of life nod off to sleep and hold its purity transfixed at any place where you might hope to bind it?" "The spirit is possessed of joy forever, it will never tremble in imprisonment or languish hopeless where it lies,— ha!" "Jupiter Emancipator!" "Closer now and closer still my hour advances, and from the chasms comes the trusty messenger of this my night, the evening wind, the harbinger of love to me." "It will happen!" "It has ripened!" "O heart, now beat and stir your waves, the spirit up above you scintillates like stars;" "and all the while the homeless clouds of heaven, ever-fleeing, drift on by." "How am I?" "I stand astonished, as though my life were starting over, for all is different now, and only now am I— Oh, that was it, that was it that in the midst of your delight so often," "you ineffectual man!" "A languor overcame you— you never do extend your joys piecemeal to those you love, Nature!" "Often I was lacking, now I find in but one deed, the holy deed, all you delights of victory for which my heart was thirsting." "Dying?" "It's only into darkness, one step; and still you'd love to see, eye of mine!" "You've served your time with me, most serviceable eye!" "And now must night awhile surround my head in shadow." "Yet joyous leap the flames from an intrepid breast." "Shuddering exaction!" "What?" "death alone ignites my life now at the end, and you extend to me" "the terrifying chalice, the fermenting cup," "Nature!" "That he who sings you drink a draft of it, his spirit's ultimate enthusiasms!" "I am at peace with it;" "I seek now nothing further than the site of my own sacrifice." "I am well." "O Iris, rainbow over plunging chutes of water, when jets of silvery mist leap up my joy will be the way you are."