Classic Poem

Vollblühender Mond! In deinem Licht

Great blossoming moon! Your yellow light
Turns all of the sea to liquid gold;
Into the distance the long beach stretches
As clear as day with the glamor of evening.
And through the starless, pale-blue heavens,
Massive, white clouds are moving;
Like colossal statues of the gods,
Of glistening marble.

No! Those white images never are clouds!
They are the very gods of old Hellas,
Who ruled the ancient world so gladly,
Who now, dead and supplanted,
Drift, like great ghosts, in a spectral procession
Through the hushed heavens at midnight.
Awed and enraptured I wondered and looked on
This air-molded Pantheon,
These solemn, majestic and fearfully-moving
Towering figures . . .
That one is Kronion, king of the heaven,
Snow-white are the locks on his head,
Those time-renowned locks that could shake all Olympus;
He holds in his hands dead, powerless bolts,
And his lined face is feeble with care,
Yet firm with a touch of the ancient pride.
Those times were better and nobler, oh Zeus,
When you took a lordly delight in
The nymphs, and the youths, and the sweet, smoking altar.
But even the gods cannot rule on forever;
The young ones will drive out their elders,
As you yourself drove out your hoary father,
Supplanting your uncles, the Titans,
Jupiter Parricida!
And I see you too, haughty Juno!
In spite of all your jealous fears,
The sceptre is wielded today by another,
And you are no longer the Queen of heaven;
And your large eyes are watery and dull,
And your white arms have lost their power,
And never can your vengeance trouble
The mild, God-bearing Virgin
And the miracle-working Son of God.
You too, I see there, Pallas Athene!
Could not your shield and wisdom ward
Disaster from the deities?
And you are there, you too, Aphrodite,
Once the golden girl, now the silvered one!
Truly, the girdle of love scarce adorns you,
Yet I am still strangely awed by your beauty;
And if you would give yourself and bless me
Like other great heroes, I'd perish of fear —
A corpse-like goddess you seem to me,
Venus Libitina!
No longer the terrible Ares
Looks at you with the eyes of love.
And how the youthful Phaebus Apollo
Is saddened! His lyre is mute
That joyfully sweetened the feasts of the gods.
Hephaestus is even sadder,
And truly the limping one never again
Shall take Hebe's place
Or busily serve the great assembly
With heavenly nectar. — Time has extinguished
The inextinguishable laughter of the gods.

Ye gods of Greece I have never loved you!
For hateful to me are all the Greeks,
And even the Romans are odious.
Yet holy compassion and tremulous pity
Flow through my heart
When I see you there above me,
Forgotten divinities,
Dead and night-wandering shadows;
Weak as the mist, torn by the wind. —
And when I think how vapid and spineless
The new gods are who have conquered you,
These new, sad gods, who now are the rulers,
Who take joy at our pain in their sheep's cloak of meekness —
Oh, then I am seized with a rancorous hate
And I would break down their newly-built temples

And fight for you , ye ancient rulers,
For you and your sweet, ambrosial right;
And before your highest altars,
Built up again, and smoking with sacrifice,
I humbly would kneel and invoke you,
Raising my arms in a prayer —

For, even though, ye ancient deities,
When you joined in the furious combats of mortals,
You always fought on the side of the victor;
Now you will see that man is greater than you.
For I stand here in the combat of gods
And fight on for you, the vanquished.
...
Thus I spoke, and high above me
I saw those cloudy figures blushing,
Gazing on me as though dying;
Transfigured by sorrow — and then they vanished.
The moon was suddenly hidden
Under the clouds that rolled on darkly.
The sea came up with a rush;
And into the heavens, calm and victorious,
Walked the eternal stars.