Poems (Eminescu)/Second Epistle
SECOND EPISTLE
Why my pen, that once was busy, idly on the inkstand slumbers?
Why am I not, work forgetting, tempted by the rhythmic numbers?
Sleeping in the yellow pages, why no longer to me corne
All the trochees, soaring iambs, and the dactyls frolicsome?
Could I tell you all the hardship of my poor life day by day,
You would see that I’ve great reason this my pen to throw away.
After all this useless struggle is there any reason why
In new form the old, wise language I to mould again should try?
That profound, mysterious feeling, sleeping on my harp-strings well,
Must I now retail in couplets, like the goods the merchants sell?
Yes, of course, you will now answer, ’twould be well if for my name
In this world I should acquire with my verse immortal fame.
If with dedicating poems to great ladies court I paid,
Men of influence attracting, thus my fortune would be made,
And, fulfilled the mind’s ambition, would the soul’s distress allay.
My dear friends, so many others have already trod this way.
In our age quite well we know them, those strange bards who only list
Highest offices and many, everyone a pluralist.
Writing compliments to ladies and to statesmen; with their lyres
Trying only to accomplish in this world their mean desires.
In saloons these vapid idols now become our men of note,
Their career they strive to make, protected by a petticoat.
Why do I not go on writing for my name, for glory? Why?
Is there truly any glory in the desert thus to cry?
When to selfish passions only all poor mortals are the slaves,
Glory is a fancy idol praised by thousands of dull knaves,
Who call great a dwarfish creature, and a mighty genius see
In what is from froth the bubble in a trifling century.
Shall I now again my lyre strike extolling love? A chain
That ’twixt two or sev’ral wooers may be shared, supremely vain.
Must we all, like fools, adoring at the women’s feet down lay us,
Like the operetta chorus that is led by Menelaus?
Nowadays the women, often, like the world, are but a school,
Where one learns humiliation, and to suffer is the rule.
To these colleges of science of the goddess Venus come
Crowding ardently our young men, even of the youngest some;
Till that whole school lies in ruins, go they must the beardless youth,
A veneer is all their knowledge, nought they learn of life and truth.
Do you still those years remember when we sat on benches dreaming,
Listening how the poor old masters Time’s worn coat were patching, seaming;
Corpses only of odd moments gathered from their trashy books,
In the shreds of things deep wisdom seeking with their drowsy looks?
Softly murmuring a fountain deep they were of horum-harum,
With much toil but scarcely earning nervum rerum gerendarum,
With the deepest veneration they wound up the spirit’s pulley,
With Egyptian kings, plants, planets, thus our poor brains cramming fully.
The astronomer methinks I see, how from the chasm’s yawn
Easily as from a drawer one by one the worlds were drawn,
Dark eternity unrolling, he then taught us marvelling
How the epochs, like a necklace, pearl by pearl, thus formed a string,
Like the learned Galileo in our hearts we then could feel
How the whole world’s sphere was whirling round and round as does a reel.
With dead languages, with planets, in the dizziness of dream,
Our old master some moth-eaten mummy of a king would seem;
While he spoke of king Sesostris, on the walls and on the ceiling
I examined all the cobwebs, dreamt of blue eyes, my mind reeling,
And on copybooks, on margins, wrote down verses for some Flora,
With her rosy cheeks, capricious, telling how I did adore her.
So in a confused, wild jumble floated there before my mind
Kings, and animals, and planets; images of every kind,
All things, even boys’ pens scraping, to the silence charm then gave,
In my dream I saw green meadows, cornfields in the wind would wave,
In an infinite all melted, down would fall my heavy head;
When the bell rang, old Sesostris must already have been dead.
Then the fancied world was living, its existence we could feel,
While the actual one, so squalid, seemed far distant and unreal;
Only now we see how barren, rough and narrow is the road
On which honest souls, like pilgrims have to stagger with their load.
In this common world of ours it is dangerous to dream,
Lost you are with your illusions, and ridiculous you’ll seem.
Therefore it is useless asking why my pen so idly slumbers,
Why am I not, work forgetting, tempted by the rhythmic numbers,
Sleeping in the yellow pages, why no longer to me come
All the trochees, soaring iambs, and the dactyls frolicsome;
If I were to write more verses I’m afraid that I might raise
The applause of that wild rabble, my contemporaries’ praise.
If serene I bear their hatred, and my heart is not impressed,
It is certain with their praises I should sorely be distressed.