Poems (Eminescu)/First Epistle
FIRST EPISTLE
When with weary eyes the candle I blow out, my thoughts still stray,
While the clock alone is treading on old Time’s unending way.
If I draw aside the curtains, in the middle of the night,
All the room at once is flooded with the moon’s voluptuous light;
From the deep night of remembrance back again she doth recall
An eternity of sorrows and in dream we feel them all.
Moon, the world’s vault gliding over, Queen who dost o’er oceans reign,
Giving life to thoughts, thou soothest with sweet balm our endless pain;
Deserts vast and lonely glisten ’neath thy clear light, purest maid,
And the sparkling spring that’s hidden far away in forest glade!
On how many countless billows doth thy power hold its sway,
When thou glidest forth on ocean’s moving solitary way!
And what flowered shores, what cities and what palaces are shown,
Through thy magic charm transfigured, but to thee, to thee alone!
Through how many thousand windows dost thou enter still and soft,
Shining mild on brows which ponder, into eyes that look aloft!
There a king, great plans combining, round the globe a web doth twine,
While what he will do to-morrow scarce a poor man can divine…
Though their lots are cast asunder, both are doomed by fate’s great might,
Both are swayed by death’s grim genius and the ray of thy pure light;
Slaves of the same chain of passions in this same world, willy-nilly,
Be they weak, or be they mighty, be they geniuses or silly.
This one, pleased with his own image, in the mirror curls his hair,
While through space and time another searches for what’s true and fair,
He from yellow leaves will gather countless trifles, one by one,
And their transient names well scoring, this is all that he has done;
While a third, behind his counter, marks what he has bought and sold,
In his grandest dreams sees only galleons freighted down with gold.
There alone the aged Master silently is reasoning,
Leaning on his worn out elbows, lost in endless reckoning,
Lank and slender, bent and crookèd, shivering as he doth linger,
All the universe unmeasured resting on his little finger.
For there under his broad forehead past and future, all is clear,
The eternal night, vast spaces, all like problems solved appear;
And like Atlas who in old times bore the skies upon his shoulders,
So he all supports with numbers—the eternal world’s upholders.
While the moon shines on piled volumes, he returneth with his mind
In a twinkling over aeons, endless centuries behind.
First of all, in the beginning, in the utter nothingness,
With no being, no existence, lifeless, will-less, purposeless,
When there was no thought, no secret, and yet nothing was disclosed.
When, himself alone conceiving, sole the Unconceived reposed,
Was there nothing but a chasm filled with waters? An Abyss?
There was yet no world imagined, and no mind to think of this,
For there was an utter darkness, not the slightest ray of light,
Nothing to be seen whatever, not an eye to pierce with sight:
Shadows of things uncreated had not yet begun to creep,
Quiet, with itself contented, reigned calm peace, eternal sleep!
But at once a point, one only… it moved onward, fast and faster,
Chaos was its Mother; Father it became and world’s great master.
Weaker than from froth the bubble, this point, from which all things soared,
Moving on the world’s great vastness, it became the boundless lord.
Since then all that mist eternal, streak by streak, was soon dispelled,
Since then rose sun, moon, the whole world, elements their power held.
Since then up to this day always, colonies of worlds long lost
Through the deep grey vales of chaos are on unknown pathways tossed.
Springing forth like swarms effulgent, from the infinite come thronging,
They to life allured are driven by an unquenched thirst and longing.
And in that great world, we, nothings, children of this little one,
Build on earth our tiny ant-hills, heaping riches we have won;
Kings and emperors, hosts unnumbered, in successive generations,
We think marvellous, Great Powers, our poor microscopic nations;
Flies that live a day, forgetting, in a tiny network trapped,
That this world is but a twinkle, and in utter darkness wrapped.
Like the dust that dances gaily in the kingdom of a ray,
From the sight soon disappearing when that beam has gone away,
So too, in this everlasting, deep night of eternity
Shines a ray, a passing instant, in the vast immensity;
When extinguished, like a shadow, back to darkness will be hurled
This vain dream of a nonbeing, all this fleeting phantom world.
But the thinker in the present doth not stop, his mind is led
In a twinkling over aeons, endless centuries ahead:
This resplendent sun, so beauteous, now he sees it brown-red, dull,
Like a wound in dark clouds, dreary, or in storms a drifting hull;
All the planets, which no longer curbs with mighty reins the sun,
Frozen in their hearts, as maddened, wildly through the spaces run.
Like a temple that is shattered, breaks in pieces all this sphere,
Like the leaves in autumn falling, all the stars now disappear,
And all time is dead and burried, it becomes eternity,
Nothing happens now and empty is the vast immensity,
In the deep night of nonbeing everything again doth creep,
Quiet, with itself contented, reigns calm peace, eternal sleep.
From the lowest to the highest, from the beggar to the king,
With their painful life’s enigma all are vainly labouring.
Who is the most miserable? Who in this poor world can say?
All are like, and over others rises only he who may,
While so many, humble hearted, lying in the shadow, thrown
From the way, or tossed or driven, like the foam will die unknown.
What doth blind fate care whatever for their wishes, thoughts or strife?
Like the stormy wind it passes over this poor human life.
If he’s praised by all his fellows and acknowledged by his age,
What will he win from these praises for himself the wise old sage?
Immortality! Yea, truly all that he could do and be
Twined around one great idea, like the ivy to the tree.
„Though I die—he says—like others, centuries will bear my fame
Everywhere and through all ages, and from mouth to mouth my name
Borne along with all my writings, in this world’s uproar and welter,
In uncounted minds alighting, they will find a quiet shelter!“
Poor old man, dost thou remember all that thou hast seen and heard,
All that thou thyself hast spoken, every name and every word?
Here and there perhaps an image, or the traces of a thought,
But a word, a slip of paper, all just little more than nought.
When thy life thou scarcely knowest thinkest thou that others care
Thoroughly to know thy story or thy memory to spare?
Later, some pedantic scholar, on the trashy volumes’ pile
Sitting, trash himself, will study in thy books the Attic style,
Showing some mistakes and errors, which thou madest long ago,
And the dust of those old volumes from his spectacles will blow;
To reward thy toil he’ll give thee, great attention, learned sage,
Two lines in a random footnote, ending thus a stupid page.
One may build a world, destroy it: over what one thinks holds fast.
Whatsoe’er it be, a shovel full of earth is thrown at last.
Heads a universe enclosing, sceptered hands desiring sway
Over empires vast unbounded, ’tween four boards must lie one day…
There a funeral procession gravely, solemnly advances,
So ironically splendid, with indifferent side glances;
And some little man’s oration, this will be of all the ending,
Not thy character extolling, but himself at last commending
Under thy good name’s great shadow: this is all that waits for thee.
But posterity e’en fairer still will be, O thou wilt see…
Since they could not reach thy standard, thinkest thou they will admire?
The biographer so artful, who fulfils all their desire,
Him they’ll praise, when he will show that thou resemblest all the others,
Not a genius, but so common, that you well might have been brothers.
All are highly flattered thinking that thou wert not more than they,
And with pride their nostrils swelling, their stupidity display;
Always when they talk about thee in their learned coteries,
With ironic smile to praise thee, in mere words, well settled ’tis.
Falling to their hands, with pleasure, with great joy they’ll dust thy jacket,
They will judge with understanding, without seeing that they lack it…
They will seek out all thy blunders, out of malice sheer to blame thee,
To find all the little scandals, every blemish, to defame thee—
This is all that brings thee near them, not the light that thou hast shed
In this world of sin and sorrow, but the faults, the sins inbred,
And the lassitude, the weakness, all that may impair thy worth,
Evils fatally inherent in a handful of this earth;
Miseries of poor tormented human soul, for everyone
These will be the things that please them, not what thou hast thought and done
In this springtime, on the gardens, on the blossoms fragrant, tender,
On the beautiful, wide landscape, sheds the moon her quiet splendour!
She from deep night of remembrance countless longings doth recall,
Soothing endless pains and sorrows, now in dreams we feel them all,
To our own thought’s world she opens wide and large an entrance door.
Raising round us endless shadows, marvels of the dark before…
Deserts vast and lonely glisten ’neath thy clear light, purest maid,
And the sparkling spring that’s hidden far away in forest glade!
On how many countless billows doth thy power hold its sway,
When thou glidest forth on ocean’s moving solitary way,
And o’er all of us abiding under fate’s grand, awful might,
Sways alike grim death’s great genius and the ray of thy pure light!