Poetry · Empedocles on Etna (3/3) (2/2) (2/2)

| | To the elements it came from Everything will return. Our bodies to earth, Our blood to water, Heat to fire, Breath to air. They were well born, they will be well entomb’d! But mind?⁠ ⁠… And we might gladly share the fruitful stir Down in our mother earth’s miraculous womb! Well might it be With what roll’d of us in the stormy main! We might have joy, blent with the all-bathing air, Or with the nimble radiant life of fire! But mind⁠—but thought⁠— If these have been the master part of us⁠— Where will they find their parent element? What will receive them, who will call them home? But we shall still be in them, and they in us, And we shall be the strangers of the world, And they will be our lords, as they are now; And keep us prisoners of our consciousness, And never let us clasp and feel the All But through their forms, and modes, and stifling veils. And we shall be unsatisfied as now, And we shall feel the agony of thirst, The ineffable longing for the life of life Baffled for ever: and still thought and mind Will hurry us with them on their homeless march, Over the unallied unopening earth, Over the unrecognising sea; while air Will blow us fiercely back to sea and earth, And fire repel us from its living waves. And then we shall unwillingly return Back to this meadow of calamity, This uncongenial place, this human life; And in our individual human state Go through the sad probation all again, To see if we will poise our life at last, To see if we will now at last be true To our own only true, deep-buried selves, Being one with which we are one with the whole world; Or whether we will once more fall away Into some bondage of the flesh or mind, Some slough of sense, or some fantastic maze Forged by the imperious lonely thinking-power. And each succeeding age in which we are born Will have more peril for us than the last; Will goad our senses with a sharper spur, Will fret our minds to an intenser play, Will make ourselves harder to be discern’d. And we shall struggle awhile, gasp and rebel; And we shall fly for refuge to past times, Their soul of unworn youth, their breath of greatness; And the reality will pluck us back, Knead us in its hot hand, and change our nature. And we shall feel our powers of effort flag, And rally them for one last fight⁠—and fail; And we shall sink in the impossible strife, And be astray for ever. Slave of sense I have in no wise been; but slave of thought?⁠— And who can say:⁠—I have been always free, Lived ever in the light of my own soul?⁠— I cannot! I have lived in wrath and gloom, Fierce, disputatious, ever at war with man, Far from my own soul, far from warmth and light. But I have not grown easy in these bonds⁠— But I have not denied what bonds these were! Yea, I take myself to witness, That I have loved no darkness, Sophisticated no truth, Nursed no delusion, Allow’d no fear! And therefore, O ye elements, I know⁠— Ye know it too⁠—it hath been granted me Not to die wholly, not to be all enslav’d. I feel it in this hour! The numbing cloud Mounts off my soul; I feel it, I breathe free! Is it but for a moment? Ah! boil up, ye vapours! Leap and roar, thou sea of fire! My soul glows to meet you. Ere it flag, ere the mists Of despondency and gloom Rush over it again, Receive me, save me! He plunges into the crater. | | Callicles | From below. Through the black, rushing smoke-bursts, Thick breaks the red flame; All Etna heaves fiercely Her forest-cloth’d frame. Not here, O Apollo! Are haunts meet for thee. But, where Helicon breaks down In cliff to the sea, Where the moon-silver’d inlets Send far their light voice Up the still vale of Thisbe, O speed, and rejoice! On the sward at the cliff-top Lie strewn the white flocks; On the cliff-side the pigeons Roost deep in the rocks. In the moonlight the shepherds, Soft lull’d by the rills, Lie wrapt in their blankets, Asleep on the hills. —What forms are these coming So white through the gloom? What garments out-glistening The gold-flower’d broom? What sweet-breathing presence Out-perfumes the thyme? What voices enrapture The night’s balmy prime?⁠— ’Tis Apollo comes leading His choir, the Nine. —The leader is fairest, But all are divine. They are lost in the hollows! They stream up again! What seeks on this mountain The glorified train?⁠— They bathe on this mountain, In the spring by their road; Then on to Olympus, Their endless abode! —Whose praise do they mention? Of what is it told?⁠— What will be for ever; What was from of old. First hymn they the Father Of all things; and then, The rest of immortals, The action of men. The day in his hotness, The strife with the palm; The night in her silence, The stars in their calm. |