There are truths in the sayings of old,
And here is one: whoever’s able, never wants to.
You listened, Lord, to the one who prattles lies,
And chatterboxes are rewarded by you;
But I’m your servant: my labors are given
To you as rays are to the sun—though your wrath defames
All that my zeal intends to do,
And all my efforts are unneeded.
I thought that your majesty would take me in,
Not as an echo in a chamber,
But as a blade of justice and a weight of wrath.
But there is indifference in heaven
To earthly merits, and to await its rewards
Is to expect fruit from a dry tree.
There isn’t a more merry occupation:
Along golden tresses, colors vying with each other,
To touch the dear head
And to cling with kisses everywhere without exception.
And how much pleasure for the dress
To press to her figure and fall in a wave;
And how joyous for the golden mesh
To enclose her cheeks in an embrace!
Still more tenderly the ligature of elegant ribbon,
Shining with its patterned embroidery,
Closes up her young breasts.
And the pure belt, winding tenderly,
Seems to whisper: “I will not part with her…”
Oh, how much work there is here for my hands!
—Tell me, Love, if verily before my eyes
Longed-for beauty has appeared,
Or if my created fantasy
Has taken on a random face as ally?
You would know—after all, you conspired
With this face to deprive me of sleep. So be it!
My lips cherish every sigh, and my soul
Is flooded with a fire that knows no resistance.
—You do see true beauty,
But its luster burns, ever waxing,
When through your eyes it ascends to your soul;
There it gains divine purity,
Becoming akin to an immortal creator—
That is why your gaze is transfixed.
Do I dare, my treasure,
To exist without you, in torment to myself,
Since you are deaf toward pleas to allay this separation?
My downcast heart no longer conceals
Neither outcries, nor sighs, nor weeping.
In order to show you, my lady, the yoke of my sufferings,
And that my death is already near;
But—so that afterwards fate could not
Banish my service from your memory—
I leave you my heart as collateral.
Here they make swords and helmets from chalices
And Christ’s blood they sell by weight;
Here His thorns have vanished into shields and His cross into spears—
But Christ’s lips are patiently mute.
May He not descend to our Bethlehems
Or again His blood will splatter to the heavens,
Since, for evildoers, Rome is as a forest,
And mercy we keep locked up.
I am not in danger of the burdens of luxury,
Indeed there has long been no work for me here;
I fear the mantle of power, as the Moors did Medusa;
But if God has robed poverty in glory,
What bonds are then being prepared for us
By another fate under another banner?
Having descended from heaven in mortal flesh,
He saw hell, abode of atonement,
And, living, he appeared before God,
And recounted to us everything that made him wise.
A glowing star, by whose radiance
Was enlightened the land given to me as birthright—
That star awaits reward not from the world,
But from you, by whom the world was created.
I speak of Dante: the embittered throngs
Have no need of his creations—
After all, even the greatest genius is too small for them.
Would that I were like him! Oh, would that for me
Were destined his works and his exile’s sorrow—
I could not wish for a better lot in the world!
We think we honor him, yet honor him too little.
His majesty has blinded our sight.
Why do we chide the mob for its crass yardstick,
When our own praise is empty!
He descended into the domain of evil for our sake;
The Lord’s kingdom showed its face to him;
But the door that even heaven did not close,
The fatherland maliciously locked in front of Dante.
Ungrateful land! To your own harm
You stretched out the suffering of your son;
Thus baseness takes vengeance on perfection from age to age.
One example among those of which there is a sea!
Just as there was never a viler exile than his,
So also did the world never know a greater man.
When my hard hammer transforms rock
Into the visages of people,
Without a master to direct
Its strike, it wouldn’t help the job at hand.
But Heaven’s hammer fashioned, all by itself,
A blow imparting beauty to the world;
That hammer augured all the other hammers,
And in it alone there is a living lesson for them all.
The higher the swing of the arm above the anvil,
The heavier the blow: thus the hammer was raised
Also over me to heights of heaven;
I ought, by rights, to languish as a primal lump,
Until the blacksmith of the Lord—and only he!—
Should aid me with the blow of his full weight.
—Here is this Night, that so calmly sleeps
Before you, the creation of an angel.
She is of stone, but there is breath in her:
Only awaken her—she will begin to speak.
—It’s sweet to sleep, but better still to be a stone,
When all around is shame and crime:
Not feeling, not seeing is a relief,
Fall silent then, friend, why awaken me?
Already sensing death, although not knowing its hour,
I see: life always speeds its pace,
But while the body still craves pleasures of the flesh,
The soul desires death more than vice.
The world is blind: no shameful lesson
Is gleaned from witnessing the power of evil,
There is no hope, and darkness engulfs everything,
And falsehood reigns, and truth conceals its eye.
When then, God, will come what is awaited
By those true to you? Faith grows weak
In postponements, oppression crushes the soul;
Why do we need the light of your salvation,
When death is faster, and forever exposes us
In the shame in which it catches us?
Here fate has sent me an untimely dream,
But I’m not dead, though lowered into the earth:
I am alive in you, to whose laments I hearken,
Because we are reflected in each other.
I am as dead, but, in consolation to the world,
I live in the hearts of thousands of souls,
Of all those who love—and therefore I’m not dust,
And mortal decay will not touch me.