AN EPIC POEM
BY TORSTEN SCHWANKE
FIRST BOOK
THE ILIAD
THE PALLADIUM
O Muse, daughter of Zeus and Mnemosyne,
Sing to the Greeks the great tale,
Helen's theft and Troy's atonement,
And sing of the goddess fair and white,
Who gave Paris Helen's desire,
Who consumed Pergamos in fire.
I am the singer of Zeus who dwells above
And whom Troy had invoked,
That he might spare her from his wrath,
The father of Charis and the noble husband,
The queen in whom Troy believes,
Begetting fair Wisdom in his head.
And Ilion cried supplicating prayers,
Since she founded the castle in Asia,
To the city of gods in heaven, city of cities,
Where Zeus, the father of gods, reigns: Sins
Has Troy, O father! give us a sign,
That thou lovest us, a word give of thy mouth!
Burnt offerings of their hearts
Flamed up at the altars,
Prophets chanting round the altar
And call to the goddess from the sea,
The mother of Love, that she may give,
That Tros may live pleasing to the gods.
Then the smoke of sacrifices and prayers rose
To Zeus, king of all the gods.
His long white beard blew in the wind
And his voice spoke like thunder
And thundered through all the kingdom of heaven,
My daughter Minerva is coming!
The daughter of Zeus, the maiden with the fair,
Violet-blue eyes came near.
Golden was the beautiful Charis' girdle, golden
The sandals of the Queen of Heaven
And the bare feet, golden was the fluff
On Minerva's arm, a sweet dream.
She came floating up so softly and gently
And sat down at her father's feet.
She gazed wisely out of her blue eyes
And said softly with the honey-sweet
Song of her voice, with the wisdom of her voice,
O what does my father and my king desire?
O Eternal One, I am your daughter,
From thy head thy hands have lifted
Me, Virgin, clothed chaste and pure,
Since ever I have been thy handmaid. So send
Wherever thou wilt the virgin.
Whom shall I bless there in nature?
Yes, you are right, said Zeus, I want to bless,
Bless all the people of Tros,
As a sign of my covenant, let it rain
In the springtime in the land of Pergamos
And the sun shall shine in Troy
And Iris breathe the breath of hope.
Yes, daughter, may my messenger Iris
Paint her colourful bow in the sky,
The seven beautiful colours are the paths
On which the divine ones walk
Down and up, for heavenly serene
Iris' arch is a ladder to heaven.
On this ladder of heaven you climb,
Virgin, down to Asia
And bring my blessings
To the Trojan people, then come again,
But leave on earth your palladium,
For my nearness is a mystery.
Zeus spoke. And presently the Palladium stood
As the holy of holies in Ilion,
The presence of Wisdom, the mystery
Of Zeus' love, given to the castle
By Minerva. King Priam worshipped
The Queen of Peace, the shield-armed one.
Then out of the night came the Parcaes,
Three Moirs with the fateless tissues.
They sang their ghastly chorus,
Come, love! Troy may shatter at the bottom,
Shattered on the hem of the Mediterranean,
By a woman's lust – O sweet dream!
The seer announced the dark fate,
Which he read from the reasons of fate:
Hecuba from her womb
Will give bith to our sin.
The child that shall be born to Priam,
He is Troy's fire, whom the woman gives life.
Hecuba lamented and Priam,
When Asia's mother of nations was with child,
The star of calamity over Pergamos
Hits us hard with its hot rays,
We must avoid our fate
If it were possible for us who are subjugated!
The child was taken away into the wilderness
By a slave who was to murder it.
But over his sword Mother Night
And Zeus with his flash of anger rumbled.
Then the servant gave the royal son
To a shepherd near Ilion.
The shepherd raised the boy and named him
Alexander: conqueror of men.
The unknown was of the blood of princes
And a stranger among the shepherds' children.
Grace and pride bloomed around his lip,
So he grew up and matured in mind.
He tended the flocks in the pastures
And rested in the shade of high treetops,
When a white and silken maiden appeared to him
Shining in the darkness on Ida's summit.
Then Cupid's arrow struck him with honey glow,
Paris' royal blood was aflame.
Oenone's dark blonde hair flowed
In curls on her shoulders white veiled.
The eyes were large and wonderful
And like the green moon's image.
Flowing light the glorious appearance
Seemed heavenly, all earthly negation.
She was the first love of Paris,
Whom all the peasants called Alexander.
He loved her so much that goddess Charis
And Eros burned with jealousy!
Then Eros sent his gall
Into Oenone's heart like Zeus' weather lightning.
Oenone the youth Paris resented
And turned to a stupid peasant
With a blue stubble beard. For Paris was
For the fate of Asia and Troy's walls
Filled with spurned love's ardour.
Then the goddess smiled on the flood.
And Eros laid down his bow
And Charis hastened to the wedding feast,
Where hymns were heard, Hymenaeus songs,
For to a dying one she sits down,
The goddess Thetis, blue as the sea and bright.
Then she who handed the fruit of the apple to the quarrel:
Who is the fairest goddess of them all?
The queen of heaven with golden sandals?
The virgin whose image fell to Tros?
The lovely one whom all painters paint?
And Charis smiled, sure of victory,
Than all queens more royal.
And Cupid took the feather of a dove
And stroked Charis‘ dove-breast.
Then sang the nightingale of the myrtle arbour
And sighed for the rosebush full of delight,
Then sang of Elysium the swan-genius,
When he saw the mouth of fair Venus...
THE APPLE OF BEAUTY
And Paris walked in his pastures
By dark pine's sweet wistful shade
To find the memories
That Oenone's beautiful eyes
Had imprinted on his pastoral soul,
Like moonlight on a mossy bed.
The wind from the south murmured in the foliage
And moonlight silvered the green leaves,
The moon dew moistened the dust
And little birds sang in the summer weather
A sweet sobbing of sweet love's woe
And lambs lay slumbering in the pastures.
And no nymph showed in the shrub,
To lovingly comfort the lovesick.
And lonely was the moon, lonely too
Was Paris, who could not even call
To the greatest of the gods, so silenced
Paris went wrapped in his lambskin.
Then he took from his shepherd's bag
The shepherd's flute, the carved reed,
And blew as if he sought the wind,
And his dark lamentation was lost
Into the infinitely abysmal night,
Where the forsaken one wakes very lost.
To his left lay Asia so dark,
On his right, Europe, Greece,
His heart between, bloody carbuncle,
Torn inwardly, yet steadfastly
He stared into the depths of his heart,
To see if he could find Oenone's beautiful eyes.
Then from the depths of his heart emerged
And from the heavenly realm of the dark night
A light like a cloud in full course
And like songs full of sweet splendour
There was singing around the cloud of glory,
As softly three persons swayed nearer.
And before the sorrowful youth stepped
The Queen of Heaven in her blue dress
Embroidered with stars and the peacock's wheel.
The mother of the gods saw Paris' sorrow
And looked full of grace on his grief,
So that he shuddered with a stern chill.
Then he bent to greet Hera,
Who surrounded him with sky-blue rays.
He lay before her slender bare feet,
The fragrant ones in golden sandals.
And there Hera lifted her heavenly voice
With sublime majesty and gentle grimace:
The queen of the universe asks
The sorrowful shepherd: Is she to him
The most beautiful? When he says such things
In the secret of conversation intimate,
Hera makes him like a shepherd of nations,
As Macedonian Alexander rich.
The goddess was over-lighted
By the sublime daughter of Zeus, the virgin wise,
She wore her black cloak as heavy as velvet
And her sweet voice sounded very low,
As she gazed at him with blue eyes,
From which all would suck wisdom.
A black veil was around her head,
Wreathed in a silver olive wreath.
Like divine memories echoed
The voice from the face full of radiance,
That Paris wanted to greet the maiden at once
And kiss her slender white hands.
Blue-eyed Minerva, you are beautiful,
You fair maiden, full of grace and light.
Your words bring peace to my heart
And are anointing oil to my soul.
Minerva said, Praise my beauty,
Then I will make you wise like my Plato.
Then a fire arose in the vault
And Paris became a log in the embers of the fire.
The embers ate up his inner belly,
The chamber of his heart was flooded with the sea
And sprays of white foam.
Then he saw Aphrodite combing her hair!
The comb carved from pearly horn,
Which she drew from upswept hair.
She wrung out her hair like a sponge,
Her hair wet with a frothy spray,
Then she let her henna curls flow,
Which fell to her fair hip.
Orange was her cloak wrapped around her
And green as myrtles of the May was her skirt.
On Ida's summit young goats jumped
And rams bleated loudly and billy goats
And lambs ran down the slope:
She played with the fire-locks again.
Then she wriggled out of her cloak's glow
And let the skirt fall like green billows:
Unfurling roses in the early morning,
The doves their dove-breasts waved:
And skirt and mantle sank to earth.
And Venus stood in a silken gown gauzy.
Perfect figure so sweetly flowed around
The transparent, breathed silk.
She held the flood of curls in front of her lap
And held the source of all lust and sorrow
And touches with her red curly tips
The red tips of the dew-white breasts.
Then the goddess shook her curls,
Then silver chains swayed on her ears,
Then from her tresses fell bells of blossom:
O to lie sweetly in these blossoms
And to discharge lustful griefs
Was Paris' wholly drunken desire!
Around her naked white round arm
She wore a silver clasp coiled.
The eyes glowed with ardent charm,
Then he stood like a hare before the serpent
And wanted in the eyes of the sea of fire
To be consumed by this serpent!
Regardless of whether he was wise or victorious -
As fool and loser he would
To be eaten by the woman, the tiger
Of Hirkania, to whom he was the viand
As a sacrifice to reconcile this beast:
To the cruelest he gave the prize of the beautiful!
O, this apple, the prize of all beauty,
To the apples of thy round breasts!
Ah, give me nothing! For if thou wouldst give, I know,
Into the abyss of death these lusts have plunged me,
Which I can receive from Aphrodite,
The heavenly one, entwined by the serpents!
Like a brown she-bear thou comest, hard
Is thy dreadful cruelty,
O lovely Urania with beard -
Giver of pleasure and sorrow to all men,
Great is thy beauty, great, very great
Is thy love, is the grave's womb!
Then smiled the goddess sweetly beguiling
Like nightingales, turtledoves, roses
And sang so honey-sweet, and Paris listening
Heard her cooing, cooing, melting, caressing:
Beloved youth, dear shepherd Paris,
I am the gracious one, I am Charis!
For your praise, your soul's show,
Born of the greatest love, yes,
I promise you the most beautiful woman
Of all Greece, the fair Helen,
With her thou shalt enjoy love's bliss...
Till in eternity you melt in my sight!
THE RAPE OF HELEN
Sent by his goddess of love Charis
Went from the Ida pasture to Tros
The divinely overwhelmed shepherd Paris
And there he discovered himself to Priam
As a king's son. And immediately through this discovery
The king's spouses were struck with hot terror.
And Paris entered his brothers' council
And stood there gloriously at the pillar post
And called the youth from all the state
To a journey that from Tros in the east
To Sparta far in the west.
He called as if he were calling to a wedding feast:
To you, brothers, I read from love's charter,
Given to me by the goddess. Trust
You must in trust Urania: In the land of Sparta
The most beautiful women await you, brothers!
But the most beautiful waits there
For Paris only, the beautiful Helen!
Shouted one, dedicated to reason, a brother,
Who already had his wife in the house:
If thou wilt steer thine oar into the Spartan land,
On the shore will meet the husband,
Helen's husband, the dove's dove,
He will not let the fair one be stolen.
What shall a husband do to me who is not worthy of her?
Not worthy of her, who can never be enough for her,
The stupid Menelas of Helen?
I will plough Venus's ocean tide
And flatter her and praise like the praisers
And will conquer her with beautiful jewels.
So Troy's youth set out on a voyage
And sailed up and down the crests of the waves.
Their fleet was led by Aphrodite
Through the dark grave of the valley of waves
And on the bright foamy peak,
Where Venus' foamy blossoms splash them.
And Paris after the long voyage stood
Wetted by the blue sea's white spray
On Sparta's rocky shore, on the beach
In a red mantle, all of hot glow
For Helen and rapturous desire.
The sun of fire emerged from the sea.
He stepped to Menelaus' princely house,
But Menelaus was on his sea voyage.
Then out of her hall stepped the fair Helen,
The beautiful Helen - and revealed
Were in the fair one who glowed with beauty,
All the glories of Aphrodite!
Red-brown curls blew long in the wind,
The eyes glowed blue like evening stars.
The glorious figure, like sweet sin,
As sweet and white as bitter almond kernels.
With bare feet she stood on the shore,
From her garment her breasts sprang.
The henna curls' loveliest confusion
Paris confused his manly soul.
The sweet dove's voice girreth
And her eyes' flashing jewels
Thrilled him, thrilled him like shivers -
Then he saw Troy's wall fall!
He had no more power over himself,
Delight and lust flashed through his limbs,
When in the face of the woman alone
He laid down his treasure from Asia
And gave her silk and silver chains
To bed her bare of all silk!
The earrings of lapis lazuli
She put on her white shell ears
And between her breasts she hung
The silver chain she chose,
And took off the ring from her finger, which
The old husband had put on as a fetter.
And in the night, when all the maids were asleep,
Helen in her white silk dress
Came to the youth Paris. And the two ran
To the ship, and cast off, and sailed far away
In the moonlight, which flowed down silver
And slumbered like dew in her bosom.
And Aphrodite came to Aeolus,
King of the winds, to help and blow.
He blew all night long with pleasure
And ended in a light breeze,
When Helen and Paris arrived
On an island of love, they swam round the sea.
Aurore rose with a red glow
Of red roses that glowed gold,
And Aphrodite's sea tides sprayed
And wave rolls and wave rolls
And splashes sweetly on the rock disperse,
As Helen and Paris gyrate and melt.
They built themselves a bed in moss and roses
And lay in myrtle-leaves of May,
Where like nightingales they sobbed, they caressed
On the day of love like turtledoves
And play war in love lust battles
And intertwine neck and neck.
Ah, then Daphne fled from Apollo no more,
Ah, Syrinx never fled from Pan.
In all the shells songs of lust resounded
Bewitching as a boundless madness.
There lay (and far away a hoopoe called)
In her womb the youth's beautiful head.
There the dear woman laid her body
As beautiful as if Venus were her ancestress,
In the crystal pond's clear dew
And was as white and beautiful as a swan.
And smiling from the goblet of a sea-rose
The arrow with honey Eros put on.
And as they both walked by the rivers
And thought they were in Elysium's paradises
Where they kissed hot and long,
Then once they both heard Eros sneeze:
It is a blessing when Eros sneezes,
When sweet mouth and mouth flow together.
O what lips, wonderfully curved,
Oh, what lips to kiss forever!
O what a flood of honey on the tongues
And in the palate milk in abundance!
Cupids must come, messengers
Of Venus, to knot mouth to mouth.
O how the tips of her breasts pierced him,
Openly offered to the kiss of the air,
O what a blaze, when her eyes flash,
And tan flames at the swaying of her hips,
O what a shuddering thrill flowed through him,
He saw the apple of Callipigos!
And at last, in blissful languor
He lost himself slumbering in her lap.
Then he entered the realm of shadows, dreaming,
Where the lily bloomed pale by the moss,
Orpheus sang the wedding song of love.
And the horn of Morpheus gave milk of the poppy.
And all the bliss, the foam of delight
Of love's magic of Helen
Opened to him the gate to a dream,
And to the heavenly Urania...
As a soul-shadow full of fear -
And Charis, full of grace, blesses Paris.
And was it there the mouth of Helen,
That gleamed like beautiful scarlet red?
Was it Urania's mouth that he kissed?
That he kissed? and was he then dead?
A lusty moment of time
Like an eternity of bliss....
SACRIFICE OF IPHIGENIA
And Menelaus became a fury, an avenger,
And called all Greece together
To hunt down the accursed adulterer
And his wife, and he lifted up his hand,
To bring back those who had so reviled him.
And priests prayed a war prayer:
Ye gods, let Hellas hunt holy,
To punish the sin we have committed,
That we may smite the wild Asiatics,
Give our sails winds of favour!
We will bring Troy to ruin
And therefore bless our weapons of vengeance!
To bring home Sparta's Helen,
Stolen by Asia's and Paris' fault,
Called from the island of Ithaca
Was he who was called to patience,
The patient one, also called the cunning one,
Ulysses, like Hermes the god.
Called by the people of the Myrmidons
Achilles, son of the goddess Thetis,
Hidden among the maidens, to spare him,
He was guarded by his mother. Mockery and scorn
Of Ulysses lured him from the women's chamber,
He took to his hand the thunderbolt of wrath.
His friend Patroclus went with him on his journey,
Two hearts both as in one bosom.
The praise of friendship was revealed
Of Jovis' daughters, deep-bosomed muses,
To the Cyprian poet, the hero
Achilles praised the blind Homer.
But the prince of nations, shepherd of nations, was
Menelaus' brother Agamemnon.
Aurore's rose gate adorned with gold
Opened, the golden column shaft of Memnon
Sounded as Hellas' fleet sailed forth,
To chase a guilt-stained moth.
But in Aulis all the winds stayed away
From the sea of their sea voyage.
They suspect a crime, a sin,
The seer shall consult his star
And see signs of God that do not deceive,
And read instruction from the birds' flights.
Was it not Calchas who was a seer?
He was from the office of Tiresias,
To whom Thebes' fate was once revealed.
But now Duke Menelas asked
The seer, what made the heavenly ones
So discontented. What was revealed?
And Calchas sent the prophet's disciple
Of fourteen years with an arrow
And a bow, which out of the summery air
Shot himself the oracle for salvation
And plucked off feathers and broke wings
And laid bare the entrails of the birds.
And Calchas took the insides of the beasts.
Apollo he invoked, who was the giver
Of every prophecy. He saw the kidney
And saw the bloody heart, and saw the liver,
Then he was enlightened by Apollo,
That sister Artemis denied the wind.
Latona, mother of the son of God,
As a swan entwined with the olive tree
As white as the milk of the poppy, thou didst behave
Lonely on the isle of Delos entwined with the sea
(The virgin's constellation drew the pure path)
The divine virgin Dian!
Dian - who may turn up his nose at that? -
Was ever virgin chaste and pure,
Walked through the forest with sisterly nymphs,
Standing barefoot on the moonlight,
So pure, that in madness she hunted for Actaeon,
As he feasted on her nakedness!
The seer spoke (the column sounded of Memnon
On the beach of Aulis): If you want to fetch Helen,
The shepherd Agamemnon must bring home
The daughter, virgin Iphigenia,
To the goddess Artemis today,
Or else we shall all be a prey to death.
And Agamemnon coldly felt the trembling
Of divine terror when he heard this.
Dian, above the white moon
You reign virginal as the never beguiled,
I always thought you so gentle and mild -
And are you a bloodthirsty idol wild?
Behold my daughter Iphigenia,
Clytemnestra's much-loved child,
She is much purer than Helen,
Let live Iphigenia, let the wind
Forever be silent, never the ships drift,
Forever Hellas here in Aulis remain.
From Ithaca Ulysses, cunning,
Called from the tents Iphigenia,
We give thee the hero Achilles,
He loves thee well since he saw thine eye,
So come hither, come hither to the altar of fire.
And Iphigenia frightened was.
Achilles shall I, the high one, marry,
In his heroic flesh to be loosed?
Surely he has the noblest of souls,
But I will always remain a virgin!
Then the maiden saw her father weeping
And light saw the maiden shine white.
And Calchas came to Iphigenia:
Dian wants your body for sacrifice,
Or else we shall never bring Helen back,
That unfaithful wife.
And Iphigenia said, Dian, yes,
To thee, goddess, Iphigenia consecrates herself!
The priest anointed her with the oil of myrrh
And piled up the wood on the altar.
Alas, Agamemnon's soul was dry,
He cursed Helen's accursed pride
And cursed all the Asiatics' lusts,
That now he must sacrifice his daughter.
And Iphigenia was by the curse,
As if she bore the curse upon the altar,
To offer him up there as an incense,
That the blessing might be revealed,
The goddess was good! She will already
Bless the divine Parthenion!
As Iphigenia climbs into the flames,
She stripped of her white veil,
For a moment there was profound silence,
The deity paid respect to her sacrifice,
And a white hind, chaste and cautious.
Stepped softly out of the thicket, brambled with thorns.
The people sank to their knees and sang cheers
And realised, as they sang to Dian,
In their godly joyous hubbub
Not at all that a white cloud descended,
That carried the maiden Iphigenia away
To a far unknown place.
And when at last it was noticed,
The flesh of the hind was offered to the deity
(Only Calchas thought of the libation)
And suddenly the winds blew again wonderfully,
The favourable winds blew towards the east,
Free of charge, which only cost faith.
And Greece praised with loud voices
The goddess Artemis Parthenion,
Who in her favour made the maiden swim
And also the fleet now to Ilion,
To free the beautiful Helen.
And blessed was Iphigenia praised!
DEATH OF CYGNUS
Out of a crowd of nymphs stood lonely
The most graceful nymph, full of grace,
Who, together with her sisters, often
Lay down by the pine and acacia trees
And indulged in colourful flower kingdoms
And bathed alone in silent pools.
Evadme was her name and she was
A melian nymph, born from the foam,
From which Aphrodite rose
In her first days. And lost in dreams
Was her soul's sensuality
Often to a silent nymph's sadness.
Evadme sang like nightingale notes,
Beguiling a god with her song:
I am the brown one and I am the beautiful one
And brown from the sun is my cheek,
Brown am I like the sultanas of India
And in Atlantis once the night in spring.
And because she was pure from the bath of dew
And because she was the fairest of all nymphs,
The god of the sea showed her his mercy
And approached her wonderfully in the shade -
Nothing certain do the poets know of
Evadme's blessing by Poseidon.
The sea god withdrew with a roar
In the shadow of his silver-white gulls,
To listen long to the shells of the Tritons
And the howl of the bearded sea lions,
And the hawsers of the sea rose up like the spray,
As the god served himself with the fruit of the sea.
Evadme but in the flower garden
Swelled like a ripening shell.
She had to wait nine times for Luna's nuptials
Until she gave birth. In that hour
From the kingdom of heaven like a flame of love
Lucina, the divine midwife, approached her.
But Evadme died in childbirth,
As she gave life to a son:
A new life emerged from the ford,
The mother of life sank into the watery grave,
And so Evadme died out of the suffering
Of a beloved child's radiant joy.
But the gods did not leave alone
Evadme's son, they gave him for a mother
A being who was radiant and pure,
The lip golden as honey, and like butter
So white and flowing it flowed on the course:
From Charis' flock it was a swan.
The swan drew her circles in the water
And she held the child in her shimmering plumage
And when night came, the swan sang softly
To Evadme's son sweet lullabies.
She often dived down to where the fish were fighting,
Her head to nourish the child with seaweed.
The son was seen nuzzling the swan's neck
And glow from the swan's bosom.
The swan took him with her on her flights
And sang him prophecies of Elysium
And praised the deity of love, honoured Venus
As Stella Matutina, Stella Maris.
And when the swan had raised
Evadme‘s shoot, he left her.
He became a bridegroom, he became a husband,
And he fulfilled a prophecy
And became a little king in Asia.
All the people loved him and called him Cygnus.
He ruled wisely in Colonae
And was a faithful friend to Priam.
He also fought so that Asia could withstand
The storm of Hellas on the fortress of Tros,
And stood mightily on the plain of Scamander
In shimmering-beautiful armour splendid.
But the Greeks pitched tent upon tent
On the shore and believed in victory.
But with Cygnus the world of Asia fought
And went to war with her swan:
For Zeus and Paris! they called to battle.
And white stood Cygnus in the black night.
He stood armed on the silver chariot,
Which was adorned with silver plumage.
They saw him strike with the golden sword
Hellenic lights deadly down,
So that rivers of blood flowed in the dust.
And there came Achilles with his steeds.
Achilles, raging, made a breach for himself,
Who with his sword through the warriors drives,
He threw at Cygnus his spear of ash.
And struck at his shoulder with his sword,
Then the ash spear stuck in Cygnus' side
And the sword caused a woe.
His armour was splashed with red blood,
The red blood of all his men,
He leaned wounded against the parapet
Of the silver chariot, yet fled not from thence,
But cried words to the hero Achilles,
I will not die until my father wills it!
You can still beat me with weapons,
For Asia I will endure it all,
Because since ancient days
I owe allegiance to mother Asia,
I will die here for the Asiatics
By Hellas' Hades-like acts of hatred!
Achilles burned his soul with rage
Before this king's heroic end,
Then he laid at his swan's throat
Murderous his blood-stained hands -
And Cygnus' soul swung away -
Achilles was as drunk with tears from the deed.
Yes, Cygnus' soul has swung away
On the path of his destiny,
And at the hour of his death
The song of bliss sounds from a swan,
For there appeared the sea-foam-white swaness
As genius and ancestress of his soul.
The swaness took in her silver wings
The soul of her son and flew away,
To bring her son's soul home
To his divine father's hall
In the deepest depths of the ocean,
That there his wound might be healed.
The swan settled down on the waves,
Then Atlantis' pearly gates opened.
Four white swans sang songs of praise
And dances danced all around the nymphs' choir
And Triton blew the conch shell
And Neptune's shell throne was revealed.
The bright colours around the throne
Embellished the shell's mother-of-pearl shine
And Neptune spoke like the sound of white waves
And all the depths of the sea were still,
As murmuring Poeidon murmured:
Welcome to me, my beloved son!
And from the sisterly nymphs' circle
His mother came forth, Evadme beautiful,
And all the silver swans sang softly
And the Tritons moaned their moans
And all the nymphs were a whisper:
Evadme is Poseidon's fairest shell!
Her hair fell like black seaweed,
She was clad only in fishing nets.
Intoxicating songs rustled in all the shells,
The god of the sea feasted on her...
As a bride for his divine desire,
He crowned her queen of the sea.
CASSANDRA
Apollo was called the son of the father of the gods,
Who wanted to acquire a pure bride,
He would give her gifts of grace as a reward,
That she might see the light of a fair future,
That she might ascend in the swan chariot
Apollo's into happiness not to utter!
Apollo's face was the pure sun,
That sank red in the land of the Hyperboreans,
Drowned in black night, in abyssal bronze,
And the god of the seers ascended
From the aurora red rose gate,
To bless all Asia with his word.
He rode to heaven in a chariot of fire,
From whose wheels golden sparks fly
Like tongues of flame, to tell all,
Apollo's fire-glow, Apollo's love,
Which no one knew fully and sufficiently,
His heart that turned to a maiden.
He saw her in the little garden of Pergamos
In the myrtle shade, and by the crimson
Adonis roses, the rose of all beauty,
On a string of countless knots
Counting the pearly beads of Charis,
The most pious of Asiatic souls.
He saw her woven in the golden hair
Looking out from the blue eye-stars,
In sea-blue dress and rose robes
Learning the lesbian songs of Sappho
And sing to the Kitharra the song
Of Kythereia white and lily-slim.
On Mount Ida the lambs grazed,
Feasting on the spring of the scamander.
The maiden was silent in the twilight, so gentle,
The blue veil of evening
Around her temple pomegranate slice.
The spirit of the seers approached the woman.
Apollo, lovely as a genius,
As the grotto paintings of the Greeks paint him,
With a golden rose on his white foot,
In the hair of the Vesper diadem's rays,
Entered the myrtle grove and rose garden,
To be courted in the maiden's heart.
In his right hand he held arrows of fire,
But not the ember of Eros' bow,
But to bring light to Asia's salvation,
The light born from the waves of the sea,
Born from the sea of the Orient,
The light, lovingly risen in the spring.
In his left hand he held a lyre
As the god of the Asian poets,
Who sang God's son's celebration of peace
As spirit-anointed pagan prophets.
As a song of love surrender,
Apollo, the pure virgin-seer!
Behold, Troy's daughter lived as a pure virgin,
To give birth only to the word of vision.
Ah woe! what I see is very dreadful,
And Troy sinks in seas of flame!
Apollo said, Thy heart be always open
To the son of the father Zeus, so may you hope!
Cassandra, for that was the seer's name,
Beheld with the pure mind's vision
The genius of light. Lord, I am
Not ready for love, I am a virgin,
Who refuses all manly love,
That she may give birth only to holy words.
Then Eros laughed mockingly on the lap
Of Aphrodite in the Olymp above,
He spun the projectile of fiery passion
So that Cynthius' senses raged fiercely.
(O Zeus! soon disarm the blind Eros!)
And again Cynthius thought of Daphne.
How hotly he had once burned with love,
As the sun's flaming orbit reeled,
Setting fire to sea and land
With Cynthius' burning love's madness,
The seer's madness, a god's folly -
Was maiden Daphne all his truth!
Was Daphne his love and his life,
The maiden full of grace, pure and young,
Nothing but intimate interweaving
With her, and eternal union
The god with the maiden fair and sweet
Was Cynthius' infinite desire!
He rose from his bright white throne,
Left the glories in the zenith
And wandered through sweet dreams
And sang in love a long love song
Of beauty that his eyes beheld,
To the maiden he would in love draw near.
O love! Primordial power! O uncreated
Enthusiasm for all good work!
Here is your image, the beautiful Daphne,
The soul to her encounter strong,
She meets the god of hot flames,
Lest she melt into pure nothingness!
O love! Primordial power! O uncreated
And highly praised power with creator's strength!
Here is your image, the beautiful Daphne,
Grant that she may know the love of a god!
Receive, Daphne, the light of my flame!
O sweet, O sweet, flee not from me!
Stop, O Daphne! Who can forgive this,
Virgin, the disappearance of thy beauty?
I would wreathe glory and honour around thee,
My song with a laurel wreath crown thee,
I praise thee like Charis, O maiden,
In aphrodisiac immortality!
Ah woe, ah woe! sighed Cynthius,
How the heavy fate repeats itself!
The sun-god's flame-sweet kiss
Does not inflame the virgin, chaste and fair,
Nor Apollo's love's babe longs for him,
No, only prophethood and seership!
What do you want to see, O seers?
What purity, O virgins pure,
May you not love Cynthius like fire
And not be like embers in his flame?
Zeus hath given you a life in vain,
That ye should seek his son's kiss!
Cassandra, Asiatic prophetess,
The divine kiss hast thou rejected?
Ah woe, ah woe! thy fate is written in
The tablets of fate in Olympus' meadows,
To whom, as a son of Zeus, I must obey:
I give you what you want, the gift of sight!
I give the charisma of the seer
Tp Cassandra, that she may behold the work
Of Charis and her likeness Helen
And see how through the adultery of Paris
The Asiatic plain emptied
Of war and fire and Troy all devastated.
Then shall Cassandra prophecy in foam
And warn the Trojans of Venus,
Who shall say: Fool, leave thy dreaming!
Who mockingly harp before the tent of Cassandra,
And she, most holy of sisters,
As a whore or a foolish fool!
She shares the fate of all prophets,
Who are esteemed less than fools!
The guilty ones despise holy prayer
And are thus lost in conflagration!
Fainting you see it, it must be done!
Said Cynthius. Who may resist him?
THE QUEEN OF HEAVEN
The mother of the gods, Hera, queen of heaven,
Was faithful guardian to the people of the Greeks,
Who in the war with vengeance sense
Crawling in the throng of torn corpses,
Where corpse worms bloat fat,
Therefore the Greeks implore the goddess.
Zeus reigned on Ida's summit
And resisted the Greek desire,
He looked at the Greek warriors like fleas,
Who senselessly defended themselves
Against the power of fate. (But Jupiter was fate always
Like eternal nights without a glimmer)!
The Queen of Heaven decided to act,
To intercede for her Greek children.
To Zeus in the Idaean districts
She will pray as his bride,
That he, out of pure magnanimity unparalleled.
Let Hera soften his heart.
But how could the wrath of the father of the gods
Be appeased but with love?
So she poured herself ointment from a horn,
Spices she rubbed through the powder sieves,
Cyprian henna she dyed in nights
In her long-curled golden tresses.
The Queen of Heaven's beloved maidens
In the ivory palace lyres stroked,
That red on her cheek did stir,
That they had to veil them transparently,
For full of sweetness was the song of the Muses,
Melodious fell the veil on her bosom.
From this bosom the starry stream
Sprayed, as Heracles so strongly sucked.
A bunch of myrrh gave sweet aroma
In the valley between the mountain waves.
But then the blue dress closed at the neck
The beautiful queen of the universe.
The maids approached, to cover the toes
Of her feet with henna paint crimson,
But then the foot was hardly to be seen
And hidden sweetly in the gold sandals,
In which the kingdom of heaven saw her walk
On a carpet of white-blossomed almonds.
The Queen of Heaven entered gloriously
Into her friend's fragrant chamber,
Who, as her beloved daughter.
Sang with a sweet-voiced tone of voice
Adonis‘ sweetheart Anadyomene
(In the fair eye her sorrow's tear).
Beloved friend Anadyomene,
You dream sprouted from your father's seed,
The loveliest thing about you is your tear,
That oh so bewitches Vulcan the lame,
But more lovely than thy tear
Thy womb that binds all.
Forgive me, beautiful Aphrodite,
Celestial maiden, all dreams' maid,
I mean not the womb's secret blossom
In thy heavenly virginity,
I mean the girdle of gold about thy loins,
Which never man with his hands touches.
Of all the artfully wrought masterpieces
Of Vulcanos, thy girdle is the best,
It holds the universe's rapturous delight
Like a gentle turtledove in the nest,
That is lined with the softest moss,
There virgin pure blooms the pink rose.
O sweetest, O more than nectar sweetness,
Give me this girdle for King Zeus,
That with thy grace I may greet Jove,
Beguile Jove with thy charms.
And Venus let down the golden girdle
And her slender thighs quivering flash.
And with love's golden magic belt
The queen of heaven went heavenly fair
And soon approached the black ford of Lethe
And with a shout to Jove she entered
The eerie hall of black night,
Where Morpheus watches at the wreathed gate.
To help Greece against Tros,
The queen of heaven heroically went
To the dark angel of death Thanatos -
She dared, because her soul's mind
Untouched by all curse and stain,
So that bitter death would not tempt her.
And Charon guided her with his oar
To Morpheus' poppy-flowered residence.
The god of dreams was death's brother,
His cheeks blooming like the poppies of spring,
With milk of the poppy he held his horn,
The fountain of men's and the gods' dreams.
Then spoke the noble queen of heaven
To that dream-drunk Morpheus,
Give a dream's flowery meaning
And a rhyme for me from the book of Orpheus
And all the beauty of dreams' seas
And nymphs cute, no more to transfigure,
Give me sensuality with its moisture
And most beautiful woman's glory and splendour
And give me a miraculous lamp
And a star to shine in the inner night
And give me white milk of red beans,
Give me visions of Elysium.
Whom wilt thou spice with the milk of poppies
And blissfully lower into drunkenness?
I would charm Zeus with a dream
Of wonderful magic rarity,
To appease the wrath of the Most High.
And then Morpheus gave her the red horn.
So with the magic band of Aphrodite
And with the dreaming god's horn
From a single crimson blossom
She went to appease the king's wrath,
Who watched grimly on Mount Ida,
Whether Asia slaughtered Europe victoriously.
Who saw the queen of heaven gird herself
With the golden buckle of Urania,
Would be drunk with the scent of myrtle
And would never think of Helen again,
For all earthly things were but a parable,
The inexpressible became event here.
Who ever saw the queen of heaven in the glow
Of glowing love, beauty's dream,
A marvel of milk and snow and roses
(From her long curls the foam dripped),
He would never, had he seen her,
Had he seen another, would have been enraptured.
Yet came to Aphrodite's girdle-buckle
And to the loose fall of the girdle's ends
The milk of the poppy from Morpheus' hall,
That flowed from her curls to her loins
And in supreme beauty contained the gestures.
(Can a goddess still be glorified?)
And with the poppy's blossom purple
Hera touched her mild mouth
And sang like dream and like blissful death
And like the swan of the Elysian pool
And like all fate's mother divine-glorious
And like the night of primordial beginning:
O Zeus, O Zeus, glorious of heaven,
Hear my plea for the Greeks,
See how they are in the wildness of the tumult,
Let them smell the incense of their faith,
Give them joy, peace, pious victory!
Jove heard her, who wisely kept silent.
HECTOR'S DEATH
Vulcan made Achilles his shield,
Almost as beautiful as Venus' magic band.
He formed a flourishing region
With mountains and pastures for lambs
And hillsides where the goats bleat,
And blue flowers in the golden fields.
He created the wild Mediterranean waves,
Where silver fishes rainbow-coloured,
Dolphins and triton people went to Neptune.
With white swans to Neptune's table,
Where they sought the ocean's spring
And fed on Neptune's sea-fruit.
He made the sky wild with Orion
And like the Pleiades defend themselves from the hunter
And created the chaste virgin's pure image
And created the sea star in the Great Bear
And gave Orpheus Lyra her course
Near the white Vega and the swan.
Then he built Arcadia's realms
With blue flowers, red roses, myrtles,
Myrtle-wreathed nymphs graceful,
With their darlings, the young shepherds,
Who pressed oak leaves into their curls,
The nymphs with the soft fluff charmed.
Then he created the most beautiful image of the nymphs,
The melic maiden of the Mediterranean, Ephyre.
A singer in love approached her mildly
And sang a song, that he might carry her off
On his love's wing, on the tracks of Erato
In Elysium's gardens of delight!
And finally the god Vulcan made
The marriage of Venus with Dionysus,
The rose with the vine. All saw
Achilles' shield of arms before Pergamos
Shielding him, for a god was his defence.
Prince Hector was murdered by his spear!
Achilles chased Hector around the city,
They circled the ramparts of Tros three times,
Achilles was wounded, Hector languid,
A strong one was the Prince of Pergamos,
A stronger Achilles, the Myrmidon,
For he was the son of a sea-goddess!
The falcon swooped down on the turtledove
And struck his beak into the white breast,
That he might rob the dove of blood and life
And make her the song of the lamenting muses
And make the cypresses howl and the cedars,
In this the dove lost her feathers.
The strong Hector sank to the pale dust
And was ready for his obsequies.
The falcon smote the white turtledove,
The pure lamb the vulture slew.
The spear turned in Hector's wounds
Achilles, to give the body to wild dogs.
To deliver to the birds and the dogs
Hector's royal body
In a tattered state and with bleeding wounds,
That was the mind of Achilles, the wild beast,
To avenge his friend Patroclus' death,
Hector's neck was about to be broken.
And Hector moaned aloud, Give me a grave,
That Troy may worship my body,
For I have fought for the freedom of Asia
And murdered the enemy's thousand men,
They all came for Menelaus' wife
Helen, the bride of Chaos!
Achilles sneered, Not for all the gold
Of Asia and India I'll give
A tomb to the Trojan fiend,
Who in my soul is repugnant,
Rather, receive the stroke of my sword,
Hector, and go down to the realm of the dead!
Hecuba saw from Troy's wall
The murder of her beloved son Hector
And was seized with wild woe and horror,
When she saw him lying in the purple nectar
Of precious royal blood -
My child! My child! In his blood he rests -
In his blood my dear son swims,
In the ambrosia of blood red,
A taunt to demons, a mockery to all foes,
Flee me my best life to death,
Flee my soul into Hades' maw,
Alas! from Hector's wounds I am sore!
The weapon of the Pelid shall bore
With all the sharpness of a Greek sword
And cursed and sworn to death
In a pitying mother's heart!
From the fiery arrow of evil melts like butter
In nothing this heart of a mother!
Demons have corrupted my son,
Who rose from Hades, the demons,
Yes, by Achilles' weapon died
My prince, murdered by the Myrmidons‘
Leader, ah woe is me! I call him: the beast,
That today robbed me of my dearest!
Does anyone know a pain as painful as mine,
Now that Troy lies desolate and forsaken
And wailing women on the walls weep
And the jackals prowl the alleys
And black waves roar on the shore
And all the mothers beat their breasts
And all the women tear their hair
And cry wailing, misery, want and woe!
The Prince of Pergamos is dead!
The true son of Asia! O sing, Melpomene,
O let your lyre's strings shiver
And sing to the heavens of a mother's woe!
Andromache, bride of Prince Hector,
The beautiful woman, the warm, the soft,
From her inner chamber looks
And rushed straight to her lover's corpse,
To marry with the bloody dust,
That their souls might be eternally united!
And that diadem, the jewel of the curls,
And that transparent silk veil
Adorned with crimson bells of blossom -
A gift from Venus at the wedding feast -
Disappeared from her and sank into the dust.
How she cried! deaf to all words of comfort!
How threw Andromache, the nectar-sweet,
With her tresses unraveled
On the blood-wetted Hector's feet
And kissed every drop of the blood,
As if she would drink his life with the blood
And then sink with him into the realm of death!
How her tears flowed in abundance,
How was her kidney, heart and liver pierced!
Thus once Anadyomena cried and wept,
When her Adonis was slain by the evil boar
Crushed and torn and torn!
How Charis was horrified by Andromache:
O Hector, Hector, O my dear Hector!
How blood-reddened is the marble of thy body!
O your blood's ambrosia and nectar!
Tell me, gods, does Cupid rule in Hades?
Then let Cupid lead us to each other,
In the hereafter adorn us eternally bridal!
I kiss the dead with my mouth,
Press my bosom hotly to his breast!
I love him from the bottom of my heart
And stronger is love's heavenly lust
Than Hades' power! I'll go with Hector
In love eternally in Elysium!
PENTHESILEA
The daughter of Mavor arrived from Pontus,
To Troy from the river Thermodon.
The daughter of Mavor knew no man
(How could she bear a son?)
For she was queen of the Amazons,
Virgin-warlike was all her mind.
Twelve Amazon maidens were with
Penthesilea, their queen,
Who, a mistress, strode in the midst,
Slave girls about her. So she went
To Pergamos' lord Priam
And said, Lord, I crush the enemy of Tros!
She was as golden as Aurora
In her dawning rosary,
When she, surrounded by the golden horns
In the Orient begins the dance of the roe
And then from Olympus' height she floats
And weaves all around in purple blossoms.
She was like Bellona in the ore,
Curls flowing from her helmet.
Then she saw Eros, and her heart was suddenly
By the little rascal's heart set on fire,
And since he could not have her,
Cupid resolved her martyrdom.
In her features was the horror
Of male murder wonderfully mixed
With the most beautiful feminine loveliness,
By which every youth is refreshed.
The roses on her lips smiled sweetly,
Cupid wanted to kiss, to kiss, to kiss!
The lashes were morning glory lashes
And veiled the blue eye-rays.
The chaste never coquettishly batted her eyelashes,
Blushes of shame were often seen painting the cheeks,
The scarlet blood reddened the snowy cheeks,
That maiden's wrath and fury did seize.
The Amazon Queen learned in a dream,
In her sleep, Minerva's sacred commands,
She touched the hem of the virgin-goddess.
And united with the goddess her soul
And was inflamed with marvellous fire
And set out on warlike adventure.
Of silver and ivory was the scabbard,
Therein thou queen didst wield thy weapon.
The shield was white as moonlight or silk.
Double-edged was the maiden's double axe.
So shone she in her armour steel
Like Jove's lightning and his ray of wrath.
And with the Amazon Queen
Maiden Clonia went to the dance of arms
And gave herself up to man-slaying,
Till Menippus pierced her with his long lance
And the man sank down.
And blood-reddened her bosom was bare.
Penthesilea immediately struck Menippus
The warlike hand from his right.
Bremusa fought fiercely and zealously
With Idomeneus; as they both fenced,
He drills the sword into her left bosom,
The only breast of the warrior Bremusa.
The warrior Euandra was slain
And also the Amazon Thermodessa
Reddened with blood by the Greek Meridones
And no one read the women's requiem,
The bodies were left for the vultures to eat
And their mother Gaea's virginal womb.
By Ajax's sword of the hand Derione sank,
Alcibia fell down, Derimacheia
Spilled blood like crimson poppies,
Bellona brought them home, Cythereia
Gave their souls a home on the island
Of love on a living clot.
Like a slender black pantheress,
As a lioness from the land of the Ethiopians,
As a leopardess the queen went
To the horned buck of the antelopes,
Whom she will devour in embers and turf,
The blue goddess of the sea's son, Achilles.
Achilles cried, Queen Penthesilea!
We are descended from the thunderer of heaven,
Living and weaving in the son of Rhea,
Who, in the night of the struggling throng.
Helps us with the thunder's stone hammer -
If thou wilt smite us, seek thy woe!
Then Achilles threw his long lance,
The indomitable one, in fury,
That flashed through the air in its brilliance
And opened the queen's blood,
That flowed from her, the long-suffering black.
But the parade did not yet cut the thread.
Her eye was shrouded in darkness,
The double axe fell from the maiden's hand,
Who, with a firmer hand, pulled herself together,
Resisted the beast to the death,
The heroine thought not of fleeing,
She raised her hand to draw her sword again.
Achilles saw the Amazon's courage
And maiden's pride: she will not surrender.
So he bathed his sword in her blood
And robbed her of the life she loved,
Then by the hand of the Greek hero
Eros sealed the fate of the heroic maiden.
The Amazon's father Mavor wept,
That Greece had so humiliated the maiden.
You wicked Eros! because she did not unite,
Thou hast satisfied thy lust with guilt,
You enemy of the pure! Tear upon tear
Cried the friend of Anadyomene.
Mavor's beloved Aphrodite stepped
To her little son, the god Cupid.
Beauty gave Love a counsel:
Transfigure the marble of the maiden's body,
That everyone may call her most beautiful.
And Achilles too will burn with love's ardour.
And then Eros let a flame shine
On her pale pale cheeks fall,
Which reddened gluten-red like wine.
From his honeycomb he let honey flow,
So he made her pale lips smile,
As if she were sipping nectar of Elysium.
Then he let drop seven pure tears
And let them flow down through the clouds
(Dripped from the eye of Anadyomene)
And pearl on the lashes of pale eyelids
As a sign of a blessed sorrow -
Achilles was seized with a hot shiver!
Even though the warriors mocked him as a fool,
He sank to the dust in tears of love,
Kissing the lips of those adorned by death,
In beauty like Anadyomene.
To the enemy he burns with love's ardour!
He dedicated a marble monument to her.
May she rest in a royal tomb,
Immortal be her body, be embalmed
With myrrh, with myrrh! Incense give fragrance!
And gold and silver ornaments adorn the virgin
And her tomb adorned with images of the gods.
With such honour the dying becomes milder.
Twelve virgins were laid by her side,
Young women with bows and arrows.
Achilles, in deep sorrow of soul
Returned alone to his tent,
Offering prayers to Zeus for his friend,
The most lovely - the enemy!
DEATH OF PARIS
In the turmoil of war Paris was also wounded,
He languished miserably on his sickbed.
How many hours have I been spared,
My doctor, and who will repay my debt?
And who will now give me the olive wreath
Of peace, and lead me to Elysium's splendour?
My beautiful body, praised by many people,
Admired as the loveliest, will one day lie
In the dust. And in Elysium's meadows
My soul's eternal flame shall blaze,
Which yet with the evil impulses causes,
That not one stone remained upon another?
Rightly falls my soul too much in love
With the pain and the bodily decay!
How pained I am to think of all I have missed!
Of thistles I have only read thorns
And yet I have sought with my heart's strength
The will of the goddess and the fruit of love!
With sadness of soul he fell asleep.
Sleep's balm soothed the pain.
In his dream he saw starlight,
The Virgin's stars flamed like candles for him,
The soul left the body and rose lightly,
Till it reached the Parcae's dark house.
Lachesis was not present with Clotho,
Only the great-grandmother Atropos
He saw the scissors move in her hand
And hold the thread that was the lot
Of Paris' life and death
And death was destined unchangeable.
And Atropos raised her thin voice
And said in a trembling, aged tone,
You can never escape the fury of death,
But you, Paris, seek Oenone's
Mercy that was your first love,
That she may be thy last love.
On the morrow after the Parcae‘s dream
Paris rose, still weak in all his limbs.
From Eos' womb a shower of roses burst,
As Paris left the city unrecognised,
Wounded and weighted, limping on his staff,
He saw Phoebus flashing above Ida.
Lost in his fate's dream, he staggered
To the pastures of the Idaean mountains,
The prince of Troy. His opinion wavered,
Whether his first love would sweeten
And more sweeten his bitter death.
Then he came to a shepherd's hare.
And by the dear lambs he saw her,
The wonderful shepherdess of his youth,
Her dress, like snow, flowed like melody
And was not quite so white as her virtue.
He looked at her and smiled, lost
In dreams, as he had once chosen her.
As once her hair fell so dark blond
And her eyes still looked so green.
In the east Phoebus stood on the horizon,
Enlighting the fair one with the glow
Of first love and the sun's glow.
In the heart of Paris red roses bloomed.
Oenone, he said, glorious Oenone,
Do you remember our love?
Thou dost often emerge from my dreams' poppies
And when I think of thee, all others are torment,
Thinking of your purity I curse the urges
Of the flesh and adore my first love.
Oenone looked at him with a hard gaze:
Why dost thou vainly dream the past
And long in thy dreams to return?
Rather cling to the transparent dress
Of Helen of Sparta, her full breasts
Were Troy's downfall, and thy lust!
Depart from me and die! said Oenone
And spoke it like the sentence of fate.
And Paris staggered under her mockery
And Paris staggered under her curse
And staggered home to Pergamos,
Died under Helen's clouded gaze.
He breathed out the soul in love,
Heart more sore than flesh.
A lamentation sounded from his mother's house
And Helen's mouth, so sweet as a date,
Sounds a lamentation of sorrowful woe
And cries of lamentation never to be uttered.
She beat her breasts, her splendour,
With her fists she beat her snow,
The white marble; called the black night,
To cover her soul's woe:
On this breasts Paris once hung,
Now in her bosom venomous serpents bite!
She ruffled her henna-brown curls
And tore the dissolved tide of curls.
The breaths chase, flee, falter,
Like the maenad's wild rage
Is her mind raging with grief,
Then again like the night of misery broods.
From her dusky blue slits of eye
And from the gleam of glorious jewels
Crystal lightnings of despair flash,
Crystal tears of her soul's grief,
That flow in heavy torrents on her cheeks,
On which Paris' mouth once hung.
Ah woe is me! Helen of Sparta cried aloud,
I am called to the blackest misery,
Called by Zeus to be death's bride,
I became death's wife when, choosing love.
Love united me to Prince Paris.
The fair one like Castile's fountain wept.
But in heaven saw the goddess Charis,
In the third heaven saw Urania,
The dead body of her favourite Paris
And like death her beloved Helen
And came to her son full of compassion,
That Cupid reached the heart of Oenone.
And Eros stretched his bow of flame,
Dipping the tip of the flame in the honey.
The arrows of love flew at once
Into the heart of Oenone - who breathed sighs
Laughed softly in foolish love
And wept aloud, thinking of Paris.
How it was when I first saw
The youth, that shepherd Alexander?
Who can resist the god Cupid?
Even in the meanderings of life
My love for Paris was never lost!
Ah woe is me! Oenone cried out.
Then she rushed away from the pasture,
With mingled feelings of love and grief,
In each case, sighs around her mouth,
So she hastened and came to Troy's walls
(As Troy stood only in ruins)
Where all cried aloud for Paris! Paris! lamenting.
The gravedigger came from Pergamos
And piled up the wood to burn the corpse,
The prince was carried away by fire from Tros
To his Father Ether in a better land
And the west wind blew the smoke and ashes mildly
Far away to the Hesperian realm.
Wretched Oenon! Bliss
Is for me alone the love-death of ardour!
With Paris I die of love's woe!
The fire never quenches my tears,
Since Eros' fire spiced my soul!
And so Oenone threw herself into the fire.
CASSANDRA'S DEATH
Alas, thou glorious Laocoon,
How the wet, slippery serpents
Of the sea assailed thee! thy strength faded away,
As elemental forces of damp depths wrestled
With thy life that thou didst surrender,
As if you had no strength left in you.
What can one do against such tongues,
As they licked at this naked body,
What to do against such serpents that slithered
Around thee, that were in the iridescent garment,
From which they flayed themselves seven times
And exploited you in your flesh.
You were under the naked serpents' spell,
By their duplicity wooed
And their death-wish! Like a man
Died in the fight against carnality
Thou art sunk; still the serpents writhe;
With thee the wall of Troy is fallen.
And by Ulysses' cunning with that horse
The wild Ajax stormed into Tros,
He ravaged Asia's hallowed ground
And hunted down the princess of Pergamos,
The seeress Cassandra, who flew
And gasped breathless before the image of Minerva.
O sacred palladium! O covenant
Of the Most High, given to us by Minerva!
I kiss your gold with my chaste mouth,
And my lips tremble and quiver,
I touch with chaste virgin's kiss
The treasure in the midst of golden geniuses.
Minerva I call, the virgin,
Who from Zeus' head sprang pure:
Save me from that wild man
And let me be a virgin unharmed,
Preserve my virginity! And must I therefore
Also go down to Lethe's river!
The shepherd of the nations Agamemnon entered
In the temple of Minerva, his people
Remained before the gate according to his counsel,
The shepherd took the maiden for his prey.
(The beauty Helen had escaped
To Egypt before the man Menelas.)
And Troy had sunk into rubble and dust
And on the ruins pale smoke smoked,
The Greeks had drunk Troy's blood
And now wreathed themselves with the palm of victory
And prepared their fleet for the homeward voyage
And consecrated their journey to the god of the sea.
The shepherd of the nations, a man of the best polish,
Took Cassandra with him as the spoils of war
And led her bound on the ship
(This was only to protect the maiden from the mob,
Who would have ravished the Trojan).
The Parce now turns Cassandra's fate.
But Cassandra's brother, Aeneas,
Had fled from Tros before the Greek army.
He called to Charis and to the son of Rhea,
To Zeus, all-powerful and high,
And saw the smoke of Troy blow away with the winds.
And his sister with the ship vanish.
Aeneas in his piety called
To the beloved of Anchises, Charis:
Goddess of love, watch over the maiden
And shine upon her as Stella Maris
And bless her as Stella Matutina,
That she may endure as saint virgin.
Foxes have pits, doves have nests,
But where shall your Aeneas rest today?
Though I am restless, my sister rests
In thy grace, Charis, safe now
And evermore, wheresoever her star leads her,
That thy goodness may ever attend her.
And Agamemnon's fleet came home,
As his Clytemnestra received them.
The wife went out to the quay,
As if she were much attached to her husband,
Adorned like a loose coquette
The fleet awaited her in the harbour.
And Agamemnon stepped from his ship,
And mounted the triumphant king's chariot,
With him an image of the purest polish
And a purity never to be told,
The image of the pure virgin-goddess:
The seeress Cassandra mild of grace.
When Clytemnestra, her hair black with confusion
Beheld the spotless seeress,
In one black instant it was
Cassandra's martyrdom that enraptured her.
Yes, Clytemnestra was fierce as Parthians
And Medes, and resolved the maiden's torture.
Cassandra saw in her the wooer,
Who hated spotless maidenhood,
Then the seer looked death in the eye
And beseeched Minerva for strength,
In the moment and in the hour of death,
When mortal hatred wounded her to death.
At that moment Athena appeared
With her ladylike head bending:
I turn your tear into a miracle
And your death into a dance of joy
And lead your soul into the distance,
To the Platonic Athens of the stars!
And in the night Clytemnestra entered,
With her suitor, a wicked rascal.
Into her husband's bosom bored
And into Cassandra's heart the sharp dagger
The wooer put and laughed aloud hideously.
Cassandra died a virgin martyrdom.
But Clytemnestra's soul, black as plague,
Was caught up in the Erinyes' vengeance -
With a sword Orest pierced her -
The Pythian Apollo and the dragon!
The matricide could not escape
The black avengers, the Erinnyes.
They chased him the wide earthly plan,
Dressed in snakeskin to scourge him
With black anguish of soul and black delusion,
To carve in him heavy self-accusation,
Into his bosom they drove the hammer
And ceaselessly fed his misery.
Faithfully stood by him the loyal friend Pylades
And always said, Carry only your sorrow,
Cleanse your heart, a god will pardon it.
The goddess of most holy virginity
And friend of all wisdom, all beautiful,
May she reconcile your broken heart.
Orest was seized with despair,
Which black furies had measured out to him,
Flamed with the tongues of Hades‘ serpents
He heard only demons oblivious
And as if possessed by demon voices
A god seemed to grimace at him forever.
He was very afraid of Jove's fury and wrath
And had only one last hope,
To drink from Minerva's fount of grace,
Therefore he went to Athens the pilgrim's way,
Where he was weary and lame in body and soul
Arrived at the temple of the blue-eyed maiden.
With blue eyes she looked into his heart,
The gaze sank steeply into the depths of his heart
And brought the broken one full of pain
From a beautiful wisdom spring the salvation of his soul.
His tears dripped with gratitude,
Then he wreathed himself with a cord of olives.
CYNTHIA'S IMAGE OF IPHIGENIA
And an oracle had chosen Orest
To the pure virgin-goddess' image
In a consecration and in a feast
To bring her home to her native clime.
Dian languished with the barbarians
In the north, who were cold-hearted.
So Orest went on pilgrimage with his brother
Pylades (brother he was to his soul)
And steered his pilgrimage ship's oars
Towards Tauris. Crown jewels of the sea
Ornamented like white lily blossoms
Waving the curly hair of Amphitrite.
Phoebus Apollo treated himself to a holiday,
Which he earned by long glow,
He wandered into western Hesperia
In golden shoes, his legs splinted with gold,
Past Heracles' gigantic posts,
To taste the golden fruit of the Hesperides.
The old goddess stepped into her right hand,
The great mother of the gods, Mother Night.
Dionysus caroused with the Maenads
And Priap showed his body's splendour
And followed light nymphs on the tracks
To blue-blossomed gardens of joy.
The golden shining Hyperion
In the waterbed lay sad and alone,
While the caric Endymion
Selene saw in the silver-white glow,
Pan slumbered alone, and Syrinx slept
Near the reeds in waters still and deep.
Pylades and Orest on their boat
Also slept in their blue mother's cloak,
Waiting for the dawn
And new the sun-god's golden change.
Only one did not rest: the poet's lyre,
Who love sang to the grace of Ephyra.
But in the morning the boat was washed
By divine grace to the shore
Of Tauris. Amphitrite plays merrily
And waves surge around the goddess' breasts,
White as marble, like foam and melting,
She made her bed in the moss on the rock.
There lay the ship of the brothers on the rock
And rocked in the foamed tide,
As the swans swayed with their necks,
Fathomed the depths with ease,
To see if they could find a bronze snake to feast on.
Pylades jumped, Orest jumped to the land.
To the temple of Taurian Dian
Pylades and Orest went alone.
On the horizon thunderclouds rolled
And distant thunder and lightning resounded
And darkness fell over the land.
O Artemis of Tauris, O Artemis!
O Artemis of Tauris, Cynthia,
Grant that we may find thy Taurian image!
Here we are close to terrible barbarians,
With cold faith, terrible sins,
They live here in lust and wickedness
And often blaspheme thy virginal purity!
The virgin Pallas once pointed us here,
The voice spoke to us through the oracle,
That we should fetch home, home to Hellas,
The pure virgin-goddess without blemish,
Let us find her here on these shores,
O virgin Artemis with nineteen breasts!
On this hill where you once appeared
Before a poor beggar, stands thy temple,
Where they now serve thee in their sins,
Give to thy cult the stamp of sin,
But thou help that we in our guilt
Your image free, help by your grace!
And from the sanctuary of Cynthia
The priestess stepped forward with dark eyes,
This was the virgin Iphigenia.
Orest was her brother, but
In the priestess's dress he
And through the long years no longer recognised her.
In a pure skirt and holy white shirt
She came from the ritual sacrifice
And saw the two of them standing there.
Who are you, strangers? she asked Pylades and Orest.
(The myths confuse this fable here
And show fate's labyrinthine wandering).
Finally Orest discovered himself to his sister,
Since he discovered his little sister in her.
Then he celebrated a high friend's feast
And she was delighted, Pylades hatched
The plan of escape from the barbarian land
And stretched out his hand towards Hellas.
We want to flee, let us hurry to the coast,
But with us must go the image of Cynthia,
Let every one of her nineteen breasts
The dew of blessing shiver on Iphigenia,
With Iphigenia and Artemis
We flee the barbarian darkness.
So they hastened to the sea, to the rock,
Where their ropes were tied.
They heard the wild waves rolling before them,
But at their backs, the band of barbarians,
Who wanted to keep the image of their goddess.
But the divine Dian was resentful!
Dian, standing on the moon's lamp,
In the shining robe of Cynthia,
Let her gleam sink to the dampness
Of the sea tide on Iphigenia
And gave the priestess and pure maiden
Glory of her divine glory.
Orest longed long and always
To gaze upon Dian himself,
Then he saw her moon-white gleam
And dew her sweet loveliness
With her divine beauty
The sister, image of divine grace.
Of Iphigenia was so enraptured
Orest, as no suitor ever was.
And when he gazed into her soft eye,
He was healed in soul and mind,
For in the eye of that pure maiden
He saw the goddess in the starry dress.
In her chaste virgin's eye he saw
The eternal aeons hovering,
Through which he passed on the wings of enthusiasm
And came admiringly to the throne of the goddess
With only one request, that she spare
His heart, the goddess standing on the moon.
Yes, on the moon she stood with bare feet,
At her feet turned the Python-Dragon.
Then the maiden-goddess spoke sweet
To Orest, My beloved, see,
Do not become intoxicated with lust, entreat,
That ever I see my image with thee.
Look here, God Cynthius lends me his dress,
For this light I have not of myself.
To thee will I be goddess, mother and maiden,
To thee I'll be yellow as honeycomb, but more yellow
Is my beloved brother, my delight,
From him I got the light, from the god of the sun!
And in my glow you see his light,
Then in his light you will find the lightning -
The lightning that breaks from the highest heaven,
Illuminates the Father Jove‘s seat...
And on her knees sank Iphigenia,
Worshipped before the Divine Sapience!
SECOND BOOK
THE ODYSSEY
CALYPSO
O Muse, everything the poet must owe
To the loving work of thy favour,
So teach me to sing of the sufferer's forbearance
And give me spirit and give me art of singing,
So will I sing (ah, full of tears)
The Wisdom that guided the man.
Ulysses had departed from Troy
And had come to Ortygia,
The island where the green gardens were
Of Calypso. And the nymph took him there
In her garden, Calypso slender
And beautifully supplied him with nectar drink.
Ulysses became the beautiful nymph's paramour,
But he did not touch her lap.
She sang and played with the golden bobbin
And wove a dress for her beloved husband,
She was as industrious as the bee in the honeycomb
And sang with a honeyed voice.
She lived beautifully in a green grove
Of poplar and cypress, elm and alder,
In black shadows and moonlight
Was she a pearl in her grotto,
Was a pearl in the dark grotto
And worthy to be desired by a god.
There she dwelt with him who was rich in wiles,
Who never forgot his bride.
There she dwelt, where nightingales nest
In the bushes and in the cypresses,
Where barn owls look into the nights
And black crows sleep in the black shadows.
And around the grotto the pigeons would roost
And sat beaking at the springs of water,
A vine grew up there with red grapes
And green geckos through the grasses swarmed
And butterflies flew over the meadow carpet
And flowers were fragrant and herbs and carpets.
And there arrived Hermes, the messenger of the gods,
And said to Calypso, Let him go,
Calypso, let him sail in the boat
And flee from the war to his homeland
And from the garden of pleasure sweetly dewy
Through many a woe home to his bride.
But Calypso spoke, the beautiful nymph,
Cruel jealousy of the gods! woe!
The lightning-dropped trees stand as stumps,
The deer, struck by the arrow, falls!
Because Zeus and Venus' son Cupid are angry,
I must now tune the strings to lament!
But Ulysses sat alone on the rock
And watched the sea in the black night.
Melting with melancholy and longing
His lonely man's heart wanted to melt,
He had to yearn so endlessly -
The ocean caught his tears.
But Calypso suffered with his sorrow
And sighed, Alas! do not forsake me with gloom!
In Ithaca a maiden waits for thee,
Because thou lovest her, therefore feed thou on wormwood
And empty love's bitter hemlock cup
And become a reveler in the cup of hemlock!
You were my delight and my happiness,
My garden was first enlivened by you.
But you must go, I will not hold you back,
Farewell! Calypso's sweet voice trembles,
She covers her moist eyes with her hands
And wants to turn hastily to the grotto.
Then Ulysses steps towards Calypso
And puts his arm around her slender waist.
If I were not restless, I would find rest
In your garden full of sweet scents;
But I am restless and must through woe
And sorrow and woe home to Penelope!
Ulysses made himself a raft in a moment
With an oar and a sail.
The king of the winds let go the winds
And stormy danced the sea-birds away
And tempest fell tempestuously into the sea
And bare in the foam the naughty nymphs were rolling.
Poseidon stabbed with his trident pointedly
Into the sea and whipped with his horse's tail
The tide, indeed he rose from his seat
And ruled with his right hand fierce all over
And furious over naked nymphs,
So that Ulysses was irritated.
Though he saw the green eyes
In the spirit, the blond hair of Penelope,
But naked nymphs sucked at his brand
And spray splashes his marrow and leg with the ache
Of longing without end all time
And ah! abysmal forlornness.
How white the foam, like Amphitrite's bosom,
How black the surge, how deepest night,
The flood outraged with infernal empuses,
With black teeth Hades infernally laughs
And in that night works him such misery,
That Ulysses longs for early death.
Poseidon calls more nymphs from the chamber,
That they may bare themselves to Ulysses by night.
And then flee, and the pure lamentation
Came into Ulysses' mind and soul
And stir again the foam's cream
And then jeer at the unashamed culprit.
Poseidon, however, fierce, bitter and evil,
Tore the sail's guts, broke the mast
And raged so that trunk parted from beam
And shipwrecked Ulysses without rest
And without rest in restlessness
And homelessness drifting in sorrow.
Ulysses on wrecked log that had been washed ashore,
Ulysses held on, ah only the bare life
Was saved for him, and the wave plays
With him, wants to give him the last dagger thrust
And hurl him into the sea's black abyss.
Ulysses sees his naked life fail.
With the last glow from the spark of his soul
He cries to heaven, to the Virgin's star,
Help heaven, virgin help! I shall be drowned,
Died and the core of my life
Will wail in the glen of Acheron
And glow and glow and glow in the phlegeon!
The heaven of all good celestials
Heard his prayer in his distress,
Mostly the heart of the Zeus-blessed
Offered Ulysses his grace and help,
The sea-goddess Leucothea white
Came graciously from her radiant circle.
She came floating, a silver-white heron
Was not as white as she and not a swan.
Then she handed her veil to Oydsseus -
Human eyes never saw such beauty
As that sea-goddess' face -
Oh, poets cannot describe this!
Her veil was breathed of the scent of flowers
And drops of dew were woven into it.
When Ulysses dips it in the floods,
The raging of the sea and the tides subsided.
And Leukothea waved her hand -
Ulysses was carried ashore.
He was full of the salt and foam of the floods
And richly drenched with all-serious sorrow.
He lay down by an olive tree
And lay down in moss, sinking into slumber,
To refresh himself with a deep sleep,
To behold in a dream the goddess of the sea.
NAUSIKAA
Ulysses slept exhausted on the shore
Of Sheria, that island of the Phaeacians,
In a black, sorrowful dream
Grief's sharp teeth gnawed at him,
On his eyelash a tear stole.
Then the divine Athena stirred.
She was Ulysses' patron goddess,
She turned from the head of Jove
And came to the bedside of the maiden Nausikaa,
The daughter of Prince Alcinoos.
Like a lovely playmate
She came to the maiden and gave her advice.
Beloved girl with the beautiful skin,
So brownish from Sheria's sun, maiden,
You are already dreaming yourself a bride.
And you have no clean white dress,
No shirt at all, no skirt at all,
All lying unwashed in the closet?
How shall the youths and men praise thee,
When thou art staring at dirt and filth?
No henna will help your brown hair
And on the neck no lapis lazuli plaster,
If pure and spotless be not thy silk,
That white veils the brown breasts both.
Nausikaa, you have such beautiful hair,
So brown and long it falls down thy back,
And thy brown eyes wonderful
And thy teeth ivory delight
A bridegroom like and a youth surely,
But your dress is not very nice.
So let a friend advise thee now,
You must wash your clothes tomorrow,
Bathe the silk from the Sererland
And the stitches of thy hairy fabric,
As if a god offered you his love,
Be clean, work in the dawn.
In the morning the maiden went with her girls
To the well to wash her clothes there,
The whole basket full to the smallest thread.
They had dainties to nibble with,
Bread for the heart and red wine for the soul
And oils for the pure maiden limbs.
They hung out the washing to dry
And bathed and anointed themselves with myrrh
And gladly gave themselves to the feast
In the labyrinthine twisted maze
Of the graceful fertile green wilderness,
The beautiful girls. What a beautiful image!
Yes, more beautiful still, they laid aside their veils
And their garments off and danced bare
And sang Sappho's odes to the lyre,
Which stroked the daughter of Alcinoos,
Who stood so slender not far from the island shore,
Her brown hair waved about her breasts.
The merry playmates with laughter
Tossed one another the red ball,
When suddenly Athena dropped it into the maw
Of the fountain, and at the fall
The girls shrieked and then laughed.
Then the man woke up from his sleep.
Ulysses rubbed the sleep from his eyes
And looked to see if he saw any nymphs,
As the air breathed through the leaves so sweetly,
There he sees a group of deer grazing,
That make the morning hour more still.
But where did that fresh laughter come from?
And there he rose in his greatness,
To seek some maiden or some nymph,
He hid the nakedness of his body in modesty,
That no one might wrinkle his nose,
With a great green oak leaf,
That Priapus' shame hid from him.
Ulysses stared black with sea mud
And bare to the little oak leaf
He stepped forth by a pine trunk,
Then the girls made off,
But Nausikaa stood still, trembling,
Because Athena put courage in her heart.
Just as the prince's daughter, herself stripped bare,
The maiden threw herself on the ground
Before the man who inspires her with fear,
Over her body a summer light dress,
That covered not much, but enough.
And then stood there as Venus' image.
From her shoulders fell the white shirt,
And over it fell her brown hair.
Nothing human was alien to Ulysses,
When he saw the zephyr play so tenderly
With her shirt's lightly waved hem,
Which was white as if wrought of sea foam.
The breaths of Zephyr or Aura float
Around her long brown tide of curls.
He wanted to weave himself into that hair
And look into those eyes brown and good
And wake in the morning under that gaze
And hear her giggles and girlish laughter.
He was infatuated with such grace
That he sank down and embraced her knees,
That all beauty's goddess might hear him
And lead him along the path of love
And touch his heart with her little hand,
That he may find the road home.
But if in her blood should stir
The life force of simple mortality,
Let him shout blessings on her brothers
And praise such a graceful maiden,
So beautiful she could rattle the Olymp
With one of her brown hairs shake!
Nausikaa, frighted at the flesh,
At the heart and mind's immortality,
Replied, I am a girl chaste
And ask thee to put on a dress
Put on one of those, one that suits you,
After you have washed your body.
Ulysses did so. And when he was clothed,
She said she was Sheria's princely child
And brought him to the palace. And so accompanied
In a great-drawn carriage swiftly
The hero she, who has great joy,
From that wilderness to the princely city.
But before the walls of that city she spoke,
Now go alone, or the crowd will blaspheme
And then will accuse me of unseemly sympathy.
Would that I, even among the sisters
I would not see love made with men
Before the wedding bond and the wedding night.
Here you will find the grotto of Athena
In a silvery olive garden.
In this silent melancholy scene
Thou shalt await the Prince's beckoning.
Use thy time, the divine Minerva‘s
Favourable favour may sharpen thy wisdom.
When the prince beckons to thee, near reverently,
Then he offers thee his help.
And if thou dost approach the mother who graciously
Forever won my father's heart,
Then draw near to her with pure love. Behold,
She leads thee home, clasping thy knees.
Nausikaa disappeared, Ulysses remained
In the olive garden by the grotto.
Virgin Athena, wonder-loving!
I will protect you from all mockery,
Which thou hast helped the wretched
Through maiden Nausikaa. To thee will I give thanks!
CIRCE
Ulysses spoke to Prince Alkinoos,
We Greeks sailed on the victorious ship
Across the Mediterranean, with Pergamos at our back,
Through the surging waves, past cliff and reef,
And landed on the edge of an island,
That was Aiaia, more beautiful than a dream.
We asked who was the mistress of the island
And did not know that here at home was
The demigoddess Circe, who wonderfully
Enchanted by bewitching magic,
Who wore a magic pearl on her belly.
From afar we saw the colourful smoke rise.
We chose from among the boatmen one,
To explore the island, Eurylochus
With a few companions went off, recommending
Commending piety to his comrades,
For he did not know whether demons might
Dwell on this enchanting island.
And Eurylochus stepped with the band of companions
On labyrinthine winding paths,
In the most enchanting of earth's gardens,
With a pool worthy of the naiad,
That Orpheus once loved, Eurydice.
I stayed and thought of Penelope.
Ah, you, who wait for me in my beautiful home,
My soul's only desire,
To whom alone my being has a rhyme,
Penelope, you bride of distant seas,
Around whose knees white porpoises do wriggle,
Thou fairest star of all the seven heavens!
So I thought in my heart faithful,
As Eurylochus and the comrades came
To Circe's palace unafraid,
Then Eurylochus had to counsel the others,
That each one stay away from the palace.
He felt the dangers of the woman.
The others could not be persuaded
And entered Circe's hall
As if they entered the Garden of Eden
And saw the ideal beauty's glow -
In truth, approaching a black hole.
Eurylochus came back to me alone.
But the boatmen, all young men,
Who had not seen a strumpet for a long time,
Full of love's longing, Troy's down-burners,
They saw themselves standing before the highest beauty:
Sabean spices were perfumed
Around the anointed nymph's daughter Circe.
Her body as slender as a young birch tree
In a tight-fitting robe
Green as the grass in the flowering district.
And even the most beautiful flower in the land
Was not so fair as Circe's slender body.
And breast and hip the woman shook.
And as she shook breasts and hips
And as she shook her hips and her breasts,
The fragrance of Saba was in her hair,
So sweetly did she stir the lusts
In every flesh, all the men wished,
To be devoured in her hair's henna.
The hair was pinned up in a knot,
Held in place by a silver clasp,
Which she smilingly pulled from the henna-red
Curled hair, which hung like a snake
Down her serpent's body streamed
Down to her loins, and so paralysed them all.
Then the cymbal she took from a silver shine
And stirred round about like smoke from perfume,
And as she danced the dance of infatuation,
She invented a dark magic spell
And said the spell, O kidney, heart and liver -
Then every man became a wild boar!
How good it was for those men,
They grunted as pigs in the dungeon,
That to the ship Eurylochus fled
And spoke to me with quivering voices, raging
Of heart that we all must flee,
This is the most charming of seashores!
But I would free my band
From Eros' fetters, from the spell of infatuation,
And took up my sword with a warlike shout
And with me went seven as one man
And so we went in swift haste
Through the land to the bewitching palace.
Then Jove' son stepped before my feet,
The messenger of the gods with the wandering staff,
Mercury from Olympus' throne,
So beautiful and glorious! And the boy of the gods
Said thus to me, Athenian friend Ulysses,
Are you sure of your victory?
Look, dear friend, you love Penelope
And would crown her with thy troth.
But what if thou should'st see the foam and snow of limbs
And glow of the cheeks and hair of the fair
Of fair Circe, and the lappets of her shirt
And her golden apple bosom bounce?
She will give thee a sweet wine,
Of which thou shalt be drunk with hot lust,
But she will mix in that sweet wine
Mandrake, shall dip the love-apples
Into that drink, and thou drinkest that brew,
Then she'll count you as a wild sow's brood.
But Athena wants to save you, friend
Of the faithful lovers she is called,
To protect thee from the enchanting foe,
Jove' daughter hath sent me to thee.
If Circe bewitches thee, Laertes' son,
Dip the virgin's poppy in Circe's drink.
And with that Mercurius went up
To his father's house in the summit snow.
I went thither a man strengthened in God,
Carrying in my heart my brothers' woe,
Walked with the poppy without rest
And entered the bewitching palace.
When Circe met me - oh terror
And fear seized me before mighty Eros!
Eros and Circe seemed to be teasing each other
And wanted to destroy me, Hellas' hero,
With a wave of their colourful skirts
Enchanting me into the body of a goat.
Then Circe handed me with a sweet smile
The love-apples in the sweet wine.
She already saw me panting as the dog of Hades,
Then I dipped in the drink of the virgin poppies
With white milk and crimson blossoms.
Enchanting Circe's white cheeks glowed.
Who art thou, stranger? said the fair one softly,
That you have not become a beast to me?
Who can escape my magic circle
And his own carnal desire?
I said, O nymph, give me back
Those enchanted ones, the children of Athena!
Then she waved her magic wand
And before me stood Hellas' heroic sons.
Take to thee those I have given thee
In a new enchanting beauty,
Said Circe, my Ulysses, stay a while
And live in Circe's garden like a king!
We stayed gladly, no need to be ashamed,
As nymphs naked before us bathe
And Circe herself sweetly praised
Danced before us the dance with the naiads -
O snow of the body, o rose of the locks -
Then we made ourselves free of Aiaia.
THE EGYPTIAN HELEN
But how fared the prince Menelaus,
Who sought his bride ten long years?
He walked through ruins, blood and dust and chaos,
Always before his eyes a bright clear
Vision of the beauty of his beloved maiden,
Who ever increased in glory!
He lay with his servants in the tent
And was alone in his sleeping dream
And beheld her in his inner world
And saw her floating through the inner room
And there sounded the dearest name,
And he was filled with blissful feelings.
To love her so bordered on madness,
She herself seemed mad to him,
With love's mad beauty she wore,
She was to him madness and misery,
She plunged into the abyssal chaos
Of Menelaus' sensual desire.
But out of the chaos of his passion
She emerged pure as a lily,
Clad in the serer silk taffeta
She appeared to him like pure moonlight
And her eyes were blue flowers
And a pure soul's sacred flowers.
The bliss of the soul, a spark of the gods
From the blissful grove of Elysium,
Intoxicated him with delight. Drunk with delight
He sank blissfully still and silent
In her soul's fair grace mild,
Minerva‘s, Juno‘s, Venus' image.
Athena gave her wisdom and understanding
And Juno the sublime pure change
And Venus (without or with robe)
Gave to her eyes the white milk of the almond
The charm and spark so beguiling,
In which Menelas was too deeply sunk.
But the war was over, and out of the rubble
Of smoky chaos Menelas hastened,
Before his soul‘s eye the dream-image ever;
Whether he would savor of its reality,
To seek was his only desire,
So he boarded the ship and set sail for the sea.
He sailed with a fleet of chosen friends
To the wide Mediterranean to find out
Whether she was but a sinful coquette
In mad sensuality and sins of the flesh
Or a saint in purity
And far from all shameful meanness.
He was so dream-drunk with the image,
That lived in the dreams of his soul,
That he saw her in the foamy clime
Of the sea, as if she floated there like Venus,
Like a cloud, like a white hand,
Who beckoned to him, who stared unblinking.
And yet the shimmering figure melted
Into nothing, as dreams melt early in the morning.
Instead Menelaus soon saw
God Proteus resting alone on a rock,
His cloak was of brown sealskin
And his aged eyes looked bright.
And Menelas called to Proteus the word,
Where shall I find the fair Helen?
And Proteus cried out, There is a place,
Near the shores of the Mediterranean,
Where priestesses Phryne and Thais are
Before Isis' image, the Queen of Sais.
Step before the graced image of Isis you
And greet her and lift the veil chastely
And you will look - and weep all the time.
And Proteus flew away as a white heron
And left the brown sealcoat behind.
And Menelas continued to plough the sea.
Then he saw the Sphinx with sharp paws
And lion body and the splendour of woman's breasts.
In this desert land of wild cats
All the sons of the desert seemed to lust,
To bed down in the dead realm of lust,
Hence the glory of cities of the dead.
The naked women waltzing their linen
And girls lay lightly at love play
And called their beloved their hawk
And praised his blood as Father Nile
And from the desert the south wind blew
The sultriness into the goblets of open lotuses.
The living surrendered to their senses
And to their lust in the land of Egypt,
But the gods lay in the linen
As the dead deep in pyramid crypts.
But one called Mizraim as sweetheart:
The goddess with the head of a kitten.
In black velvety smoothness
The slender cats strode through the alleys.
In velvety suppleness the maiden
In the twilight would never refrain
To step before her goddess Isis' image
And to pray for her dream of the senses.
The girls in transparent robes,
Menelas did the same and approached the image.
A white linen, with blue ribbons
Surrounded, the image of Isis veiled.
Then the priestly Thais prayed
For Menelas to the Queen of Sais.
Then a rustle blew through the white cloth,
Black stones fell from the priestess,
She seemed to listen to Isis' word,
As if the pure one spoke to the sinner,
Then she said, If you seek your Helen,
Then hasten at once to Alexandria.
The prince went straight to Alexandria
And saw her sitting there drinking beer,
Helen in her enchanting light.
O Helen, beloved, art thou here,
Who always glowed in my dream!
Let me touch thee! Come home to Sparta!
And Helen touched his hand,
Ten fingers entwined, tenderly.
So tenderly they left Egypt,
Through the waves they forced themselves.
They swam proudly with their ship
And came to the Spartan clime.
They lived there in matrimonial hall
And shared table and board, beer and bed
And in the bed of their voluptuous gushes -
Then the fair one gave herself cool and coquettish
And again cool and cold and then frigid
And peace reigned in the graveyard of the house.
When the frigid rose from the cold camp
Rising in the morning, beautiful and slender,
Then Menelaus called her hunger-stricken
And weakling. And with endless quarrelling
Each day the cold morning began
And all desire sank into vile sorrow.
And unbearable became his nearness
To fair Helen in sweet charm
And dead body. And their marriage
Was but torment and all happiness avarice.
And how the lust also tempted that maiden,
She remained a frigid fountain of strife.
And so it went on until her hair turned grey
And her skin withered and her teeth dulled.
In a dull marriage husband and wife
Wounded in the dreary mire of everyday life.
And what once was the sweet torment of lust,
Was but tasteless and vile and stale.
LUSITANIA
The gods are indeed very jealous!
The celestials in the battle for Pergamos
Are already praised by the poet valiant,
But where is the prize of Dionysus?
O Liber! pass the pine-stick with vines,
Then I'll sing of thy friend's wandering life.
From the Indus and the Ganges had come
In wine intoxication and madness with the Maenads
Dionysus, his eyes glowing
Like flames of fire from the grace of wine,
Who died and gave himself in the blood of the vine -
With the Bacchantes now Bacchus rests.
Not only with dissolved hair maenads
To him sacrificed song and grape juice,
At first bathing in the stream like naiads,
There were also in Jacchos' discipleship
The glorious one's friends anointed with oil:
I praise Lusus now from the congregation.
When Bacchus had once come to Thrace
And married there with Aphrodite -
By marrying the Graces -
There arose, wreathed with foamy blossom
Before Jacchos' disciples a white nymph,
Who showed herself to Lusus with bare feet.
From that moment the man was initiated
Into the mystery of the myth.
He departed from Bacchus and went very far
And consecrated himself to the heart of Aphrodite
And always honoured her beauty's charms
As the perfect image of Zeus.
Dionysus then departed from Lusus
And loyally Venus stood by the favourite disciple.
His heart was a temple-hoard to her image,
She sent him as her bringer of joy,
That all nations might behold her beauty,
To a land near the Pyrenees.
He stood on the noonday mountain of the Pyrenees
As if on a throne of high gods,
There the fair Aphrodite let see
Lusus a glorious vision,
And Lusus beheld the supreme beauty's charms,
Yea, in perfection the daughter of Zeus.
Verily, the beautiful Aphrodite was
Goddess of that land Lusitania
And loved it above all others
(And much more certainly than Germany)
And stood up for that nation of fishermen
Before Zeus, who dwells in inaccessible light.
The curly hair curled gold-red
Around her bosom that darkened the snow,
Her milk-white breasts quivered wonderfully,
Her eyes with sweet charms enchant'd sparkle,
A lapis lazuli silver necklace kissed
(Cupid fingered it) the breasts.
On her slender thighs desires climb
Up to the round curved hip.
The lap - the content of dreams to all the gods -
A breath of gauze, fine as perfumes,
A veil fair in frothy tumbles,
Which shall inflame each desire still more.
Her countenance is the countenance of a genius,
So heavenly pure, veiled with sadness,
Because Lusus' land by the dark sea Venus
As melancholy Urania celebrates.
As if a lover had grieved her,
She looks so sad and in love at the same time.
With sadness in her soul's longing
She hastens to Jove, sobbing, to beg him,
She moves the Eternal with her tears
And her grief, since she has suffered
With Lusus' people in their melancholy.
Oh how this grief glorifies her!
In Lusitania every human child writes, loves and sings
And sobs even more every human child.
Each one sways away full of longing
And loves a distant girl sweetly mild
Unhappy and fatal, consuming
The whole soul and desiring in vain.
The love of Lusitania in the heart
Of the melancholy at death's border
Doomed to loneliness and soul pain.
Mimosa trees blossom tenderly in youth,
But bitter wormwood drips from their blossoms
And drips into the souls black gloom.
Every poet desires a dream
And loves in his depths an illusion.
Voluntarily he and gladly deceives himself
And loves only a name without reward
And always the lover is deceived
By his goddess on the dark waves.
For the beloved is not reality,
She is but a dream in the poet's soul,
She is his pain, his longing, his sorrow
And only a choking in his throat
And only a whirl of his passion
And leaves the poet without strength.
The lover sees only himself and always
Only his soul's incomprehensible dream
In a pure woman's image
And humbly he kisses the white hem
Of the floating robe - she flees -
He stays behind with a sad song.
He suffers, suffers because he wants to suffer,
He never finds loving companionship.
He calls to her, but she remains distant and silent
And proud and hard, hard-hearted to the point of enmity,
And so his love's dearest friend
By Cupid's cruelty becomes his foe!
Such songs are canonical
Among the Tagids, nymphs of Lusitania:
The mourning poet loves quite platonically
The distance with the glow of Spain's mysticism,
With India's nard, Palestine's myrrh,
And in the song a reveling and a gyrating.
Full of secret infatuation, sweet lust,
Destructive lust and burning ardour
Is every song in the poet's breast.
Erato gave him the art of his lyre,
Erato, who tunes love's lyre -
But the beloved never hears the song.
O endless enchanting bewitchment
Of a pure beauty's lovely charm!
O Cupid's cruel and hostile destroying
Of the poet's soul by happiness's avarice!
But the poet praises Cupid's cruelty,
Since the poet is in love with his suffering!
Then from the source of his anguish
Longing rises, an endless yearning;
So often from the grottoes of his eyes stole away
The sorrowful, lamentable tears,
Were born from the flood of tears of grief
The beauty the poet had chosen.
But this grace not of this world
Floats in the crystal sphere of the stars.
The poet never holds her in his arms,
So his soul longs to be far away.
Beautiful as she is, incomparable in beauty,
Yet so distant and unattainable!
O empty fantasy! O vanity!
O nothingness! is the poet's grief.
Then sweet voluptuousness mingles with his sorrow,
His misery overflows with the shiver of delight,
And he is but melancholy - O saudade! -
Of a melancholic Venus‘ grace!
PENELOPE
And at last Ulysses had arrived,
Stranded in the late night on the fringe
Of Ithaca, where through the night swam
The white moon in the silver foam.
Ulysses laid down his weary limbs
In the green moss, his eyelids sank.
Old terrors rose in his heart
With a lust like pomegrenades fertile,
To rouse the python dragon within him,
The sirens seemed beautiful and terrible.
As much as he held himself bound to the mast,
He was drawn to the one he found beautiful.
In the sweet song of the sirens' choir
One excellently appeared full of splendour,
With garnet mouth and white teeth,
The snow of her bosom, the night of her eyes,
A body like a goddess' body of foam,
The womb covered with a transparent hem.
The more lust and desire tore
Ulysses' flesh, he called his comrades,
To save him from the power of darkness.
And so the blood flowed of Adonis,
Because the lust of the wild sow
The beautiful Cypris plunged into mourning.
The swell, the swell of her body
And the siren's whisper of infatuation
And the promise of pleasure of the sea-sprouting woman
Gave Aphrodite's glory Cyrene
(That was the beauty's name), but around her bosom
Demons, serpents surged and empuses.
And when Ulysses was chained to the mast
And more tightly bound, the more
Cyrene tempts him, Bedded in lust
I give Elysium's delight of desire
To brave Ulysses. - And one cry
To King Zeus, and all was over.
Ulysses' heart was so weary
As if his soul were Troy's ruins.
His body was bloodless, as if he'd been beheaded
And now walked as a revenant, worse
Demon of the night, with hollow blind eyes
Sucking the blood from the hearts of men.
He woke up from a confused dream,
When he asked Agamemnon, the prince,
Whether from Aurore's red silk fringe
Had the shaft of Memnon's pillar rung out?
And if the black one felt pleasure
As a bitch feels, swarming with dogs?
And be not at all the mad bitch
Of Sparta to blame for the whole war,
She was a hind to Menelaus
In sweet-dreaming groves of sweet love
And rare-beautiful, as beauty never is;
And was but a street bitch in heat!
Ulysses awoke and was bewildered,
For this great bitch Helen
He had wandered through flood and archipelago
And ever far from his native Ithaca?
Because Paris sipped at the fountain of lust,
Was he smitten by the gods' wrath?
The proud son of Venus and Bacchus
Priapus lifted his head, dripping with blood.
Ulysses had a hate and scorn
At that garden god's fierce rage,
Who ruined Troy and Greece,
Gave them into the wrathful gods' hands.
Then mighty Priap took his revenge
And stirred on Ulysses‘ sweet blood.
He longed for a deep grave
In the womb of mother earth, from the flood
Drinking eternal oblivion, from Lethe.
So Ulysses, sinking anew into slumber.
The lovely one in the third kingdom of heaven
Compassionately watched him, Urania,
With sadness so soft as velvet.
At her feet Philia listened,
Who was the love goddess' faithful handmaid
And suffered as her mistress softly lamented.
Urania, from your eyes almond
Yet flows the milk of consolation,
Like a cloud of melancholy. A tender mourning cloak
Emerged from the butterflies of the sky
And tapped with the butterfly's feelers finely
On Venus' white shoulder bone.
Deeply touched by such tenderness,
The queen of the universe felt
How love beautifully adorns all creation,
How love was the meaning of all creation
And how above all, O how wonderful,
Her father Jove was full of love!
Yes, above that sphere of lightning and thunder
Was Jove's, the most-beloved, domain.
And she, the star of the morning over the sea,
Beat upon her wonderful dove's eyelid
And dripped a tear on the byssus
Of her robe, and blessed Ulysses in his sleep.
I weave him in my long hair
And lay him in the crook of my arms.
I make more glorious the wonderful
Penelope and give the glow-warm
Aura of heaven's glory to her.
Be my love her beauty's adornment.
From the Adonis garden I pluck roses
And weave her a red mantle.
The green eyes of that flawless one
I dip in my love's milk of almond.
I pour my love's lovely sweetness,
So that it flows from her head to her feet.
Urania let down her veils,
So that waves of mist enveloped the earth,
From which the trees drink drops of silver,
The thirsty, the eternally unquenched,
The veils sank into the weary grass,
That fed on the milk of Venus' star.
Urania called Vesper of Hesperia,
The gleams came from the Atlantides
And gave Lusitania in Iberia
And its sad poets peace,
In a blue mantle they wove sorrow
And sank into slumber on Venus' breast.
O mild goddess in the blueness of evening,
With roses your mantle is red embroidered,
We weave ourselves in thy loving care
And see how beautiful your heavenly eye looks,
Merciful calming of our soul's woes.
Penelope walked through the evening glow.
Ulysses awoke in the damp moss,
Saw her with the grace of charites
Walking like a soft white rose
In the red of the evening glow. With glowing love
Urania embraced the fair grace,
The eye green as Ithaca's pistachio.
O green of the sea, white of the moon, mildness
The face's graceful gleam!
In change chastity, without all wildness
Of lust, purest of all women!
Flowing silk white as milk and snow
Her dress, her body a slender brown doe!
There flowed the glowing snow of the silk dress
And the moon's milk of the gaze around the mind
So wonderful to the sufferer of heavy woe,
That he was weary with happiness
Deeply immersed in the grace of her being,
By Charis's likeness so drunken of love!
THE SINGER PHEMIOS
And Phemios of Ithaca, the singer,
Spoke in the hall of his queen
Penelope: Homerios sang longer,
But I too have my mind of muses
And give my throat in song
To the god who gave them to me, the god Apollo.
Yes, I am drunk with Apollo's ardour,
For a seer he created around him the poet,
Who sees the star on the dark night's tide
And light's lord, and praises like prophets
The sun of God that as a white rose
From Aurore's chaste bosom came.
Apollo comes to his dear muses
And many a young singer chooses his own,
The sorrow of Melpomenes, Erato's bosom,
But I chose not: mine called me up
From my life's tragic stage
To the fountain of Castalia, Queen Mnemosyne!
O mother of all muses, daughter of Zeus,
You singer of the highest song of praise!
To thee I sing, thy beauty's delightful charm,
O grace of Greece, a blue and wistful song,
A wistful song of thy beauty,
That thy grace may crown me with laurel!
All thy daughters and the Charites
I will take as the image of thy love,
In their beauty I'll adore thee
So that my song may remain for the ages to come,
I will reflect beauty's eternal fountain,
Deity on the wave of tears!
O queen of the muses, show me
Thy winding paths to Parnassus' meadows
And Helicon's groves so native,
Let me there behold thee in thy beauty
And sing at the gods' feast of peace
With thee united to our love's lyre!
And Phemios of Ithaca walked lonely
Through the labyrinth of Ithaca's alleys,
The people were there with bread and wine together,
And Phemios the singer sat alone
And looked at a girl's round bosom
And thought of the Queen of the Muses.
In his soul lived even her image
And looked at him with black eyes glowing.
The singer saw if there was an image
In the simple throng of the people, the brood of men,
But none seemed fair to him, none worthy,
Who only the mistress of the Parnassus honoured.
She sang to him from an old reel,
Her singing was like the singing of Alcaius wild,
But more beautiful still the gracious one
In the poet's heart her likeness,
The image of the highest ideal,
The black and beautiful queen of the universe!
She was the daughter of Zeus, the servant
Of Apollo Musagetes of the parnassus
And bride of the singing wind that blows
Where blossom was wet with dew
And gods loved goddesses in stone
And gods of love gave nectar wine.
And the breath drew into the night, rich with gloom,
And Menmosyne, pure and spotless,
Appeared, the pink pearl beautiful on her belly,
In a black skirt, to Phemios the singer,
With brown arm and ornamental silver clasp
And black veiled her hair long.
She sat in golden-red twilight
On a white stone and looked afar.
The singer was so old and was so young
And his longing went to the realm of the stars
And to the true full land of life -
He kissed Mnemosyne's slender hand.
And Phemios was seized by the wind of the Muses,
That mingled with his passions.
He sang a song on a girl's bosom
And played with his hand in his long beard
And sang in his age-old virtue
The bosom of that girl of fair youth.
How brown it spilled from her black dress
And offered itself ripe as a pomegranate fruit,
Beautiful as Venus' bosom, praised by the heathen,
Who long searched for a fitting comparison
And took the image in its simplicity,
Naming the woes of his passions.
As Bacchus once welled in India
Drops of blood from the red and blue grapes,
As from the blossoms nectar dripped in full
Foaming overflows, hardly to be believed,
So their Olympus rose in full splendour
With peaks from the garment of night.
O Aphrodite! your heavenly bosom
Is chosen by men, were once allowed to kiss!
Of thy beauty all the muses sing,
Of thy love blessed overflows
The poets, Aphrodite on the flood,
And of thy pure virgin love's glow!
You emerged from the white foam of the sea,
Love's soul in the ideal body,
Thou wast the poet's fairest dream,
Glorious maiden of heaven, divine woman,
To the seafarers, the fertile jamboo.
From India - your bosom to the poets.
Because this maiden's bosom may see
The singer, he sings praise to all the gods,
That they dew down the heavenly grace
On this earthly world mean and coarse
And transfigure Ithaca to Elysium
In the heart of Urania, the immortal sweet!
And Phemios went into the night alone
And longed for sensual pleasure.
In the moonlight in a pine grove
He walked lonely and flowing by a river,
And on the waves splashes of foam bloomed
And clear as eyes the stars of heaven glowed.
He came to a deeply hidden grotto,
There he found this river's clear spring.
Here dwelt lonely and bridal to her God
The nymph of this wonderful place,
Who no one saw because she was invisible
In the ethereal realm crystal clear.
But once Phidias had been here
With marble from Carrara, when there to him
The nymph sat for a beautiful work of art
As an image of the highest passion sublime.
And as the artist formed in marble,
Near came the nymph's bridegroom, the god Cupid.
There was seen a flowing naiad
In a round body of splendour,
As she came from the bath,
Her skin beaded with drops of water,
As she slung her loins casually.
The shawl and the tide of curls wreathed.
Thus dreamed Phemios the bayadere,
Who sacrificed herself to God in the temple dance,
So dreamed he the dreaming Cythere
And all delight in the most sublime splendour,
Whom all nations of all ends honour,
The heavenly one with beautiful hands.
Folded she laid her hands
On the beautiful head, wistfully dreaming,
Who pondered beneath closed lids.
And longed for the open air, joyful freshness,
And bent her round knee bare,
Which gives a shiver of deep, deep delight!
EVANTHE
The father Bacchus had gone away
And left the mystic feast of meat and wine,
As Thrace's corybant cymbals sounded
And Eleusis, too, rests in red glow
And Samothrace celebrates its rites
And sings the hymns of its sacred myths.
Silenus remained in the circle of the satyrs
And carried the cup of wine into the woods
And preached to the peasants and the animals
And prayed to the Demeter of golden fields.
Silenus then called from the pearl boat
The divine Demeter, the mother.
Demeter handed out risen grain,
The white goddess in the blue of heaven.
Silenus nourished at the fountain of wine
The spirit of life and his love's faithfulness -
For life was in the blood and blood was wine -
And all was to be joyous rapture!
Silenus gave the cup to the round,
Invited were all the forest creatures
That with smooth, with hairy mouths
To gather the grapes from the divine vine:
Silvans, Fauns, Nymphs and Naiads
And Pan's Panisques bathed in the wine.
Silvans scampered through the pine groves
And fauns hopped secretly to the Floras,
The nymphs bathed in the purity of the well
And the naiads were chosen
By the bacchanalian triangle splendour
To dance a dance for father Bacchus.
A sorrowful Silvan walked alone
Through his native pine forest
And saw in a clearing in the glow
Of the sun a glorious figure -
Whom he called the goddess Aphrodite -
That was the nymph of that grove: Evanthe!
Evanthe was the nymph of nature,
She clothed herself in the garb of Flora,
She was the most beautiful creature
And wrapped herself in curls of Aurore
And danced there in Aphrodite's body,
The body that beguiles all fauns.
There lay Silvan in the green grass,
The little child Cupid sat by him,
And Silvan, his eyes full of lasciviousness, sneezed,
He saw the sweetness of the south sublime,
Like wreaths twining around victorious lances,
He saw her dancing in the fall of her hair.
She threw aside her skirt's finely woven linen
To one side, showing transparent gauze -
O delight to the enlightened and light senses
And reason for the drunken intoxication of ecstasy -
Her round knees and white legs
Like marble in the noonday sun's gleam.
Where all are clothed - here is nakedness!
Where all is coarse cloth - here is fineness!
Where all is worm - here is the size of the gods!
Where all is dirt - here is nymph purity!
Where all is shame - here is innocence,
For Heaven's sake, from Elysium!
When from the heavens, when from Uranos
To the sea of earth she was born,
Begotten of Aeol from the womb of the sea,
As Cypris from the heavens chose,
Melic nymph from the host of Venus
In her wet hair she wore the Stella Maris.
From her curls fell lily blossoms
And from her hand came a rosary.
Evanthe's eyes diamond glowed,
As she danced her dance before the Silvan,
Her curls fell like a cataract
On her shoulders and arms naked.
And the Panisque Silvanus took delight
At her body's beautiful line,
As the naiad, wet with dew,
Waved like a pine tree in the breeze.
As if the enamoured wind-gods shake
In the top, so was the shaking of her hair.
O Aphrodite, giver of delights,
To thee the turtledoves ruthlessly jerk,
See the bouncing of these lovely breasts
And let Silvan gaze on these breasts too:
Magnolia blossoms snow-white from Iberia
And golden pomegranates from Hesperia!
As Daphnis hung on a goat's udder,
As Romulus at his wolf's teat,
Goddess grant that one day I may lie
In the hill of leaping gazelle fawns
And sing like Solomon to Sulamith
And to Cypria the poet Theocritus.
When Venus loosed her magic belt...
..........................................................
........................................................
........................................................
........................................................
.........................................................
The faun was but one desire
And wanted to kiss the naiad's cheeks,
But the naiad knew how to deny herself
And gave only the dream streams of pleasure
And let all the beauty's charms only be gazed upon
And not devour the Faun in love!
To give comfort also to the panisque
And to his eyes new refreshment beautiful,
Goes Evanthe sweetly to guide him
To her sisters' flock, that he may crown them
With bunches of rowan berries
And reeds from the quiet seas of the ponds.
O Corydone, thou in fullness of body
Your shoulders shook and your beautiful back
And thy full bosom's soft wave,
The parted apple is a delight
And thy brown hair's glowing veil
Before thy face joyous celebration!
O Sylphia in thy rich splendour
The round fullness of thy body and thy full
Milky breasts in the night of the dress,
Like fruitful shells they gushed forth
They sprang forth, brimming with milk and honey
And like idols - stone Madonnas!
O graceful Maia, you in a blue dress,
With a beauty mark on your face
And with the silent eyes dark dew
And with the curly hair so golden,
You danced so virginal and motherly,
That doves felt more deeply!
O Circereia with your red hair
And your brown, puffy skirt,
How wondrously did her arms wind
Like magic snakes on the juggler's stick
From the shoulders to the slender hips -
O rosy shell! light breezes of spring!
Then Silvan saw Aphrodite in truth,
As she wafted on her shell,
A pink pearl glowing in her navel,
Which Uranos sowed for her adornment
In the sea's bottom, where heaven's seed
The lady begat, the lady of all ladies!
ULYSSES IN HADES
Ulysses remembered the instruction of Circe
And stepped towards the entrance to the realm of the dead,
To find counsel in the subterranean,
In the abyss of the subterranean district
And also to see if Eros' fiery glow
And the green flood of Lethe lived beyond.
How glorious Circe had seemed to him,
The pure nymph, daughter of that god,
To whom all the golden rays of the sun shone,
Who was pure light, far from the filth of mockery.
At noon stood in most glorious transfiguration
And gave to his seers a clear light.
He was certainly the god of the poets too,
To whom the wise poet submits
And all his singing is a pious prayer
To the enlightener of all the earthly world,
Who yet to the moon Luna gave her glow
Over the ocean waves, wet with waves.
As white and pure as the robe of Phoebe,
The goddess-like maiden Cynthia,
Was Circe's dress, the shimmering fabric,
With flowers woven in it,
From whose calyxes dripped floods of nectar,
Ambrosial odours of incense.
And Circe's was the power to damn,
To drive an unclean creature into the swine,
To shut up the coop behind the boar.
And then to stay purified from the dung -
Because Herakles mucked out the pigsty -
As a dove that nests in green crowns.
Yes, white as dove's feathers was her linen
And crimson the veil over her hair.
Illuminating Ulysses' dark senses
She gave him wise instructions wonderful,
To climb into the kingdom beyond, to see in the night,
To behold the splendour of a goddess.
Ulysses stepped to the mouth of Avernus
And looked into the Acherusian sea.
The mask stared there, the mouth of truth,
And announced an abysmal woe,
Where the torn and descended sang
Of distress and anguish and torment and woe!
According to Circe's instruction the man was ready,
Saint Ulysses, now to slaughter
His sacrifice, just now, at the right time,
For the great night had dawned,
Half his life was over,
Now came the autumn, dark and dreary.
And in the mists and the stench of the ground
He tried to light a fire
With wood and the skill of his hands,
But the adversity of the winds prevented it,
Then he called upon Jove, god of gods,
Jupiter, ruler of the weather.
Then lightning struck him in the damp wood
And flames flared up and black smoke -
In humility Ulysses' pride bowed -
He laid the branches stalk by stalk,
Soon the flame of fire blazed very high,
Then Ulysses went to the sacrificial flame.
O father Zeus, thou in thunderstorms above,
O Cronus, O god of eternity,
Saturnus I will praise thee, O father,
Who walked in the golden age
In the Tempe Valley at Olympus' foot!
So Ulysses shouted his Jove greeting.
Was it from the ram or was it from the lamb,
That ascended to the heaven of the gods
In a self-sustained sacrificial flame
And was it a sacrifice also of pied goats
And this sacrificial meal of fat was handed down,
To make up for Ulysses' sins?
Ulysses now met the giant, the warrior
And Charon the ferryman on the shore's edge,
That he might lead him into the realm of terror
And into the night's terrifying dream
And into the distance of all human happiness -
O heaven help! I beseech thee by the Styx!
And Charon, with the stroke of an oar, drove
Down the black waters his barge,
Down the green or black Lethe,
He swam along as a black mourning swan
And came to the realm of Acheron,
Where shadows walked at the Phlegeton.
O woe! cried those gloomy shadows
And sighs blew away and empty whispers,
A whisper went through the asphodel mats
And twilights ever more gloomy
And shadows cried empty and hollow:
O living ones, give steadily the obol!
And Agamemnon went with Menelas,
Lamenting old peoples' fraternal strife,
And Paris sat alone with Oenone
Lamenting aloud over mortal desire,
And Hector lamented Pergamos' ruin,
And all they wanted to do was to die, to die!
Anthistenes and Menon were struck by the hammer
Of fate's spell: endless suffering,
Love would be their life's misery
And dream only the nymphs of sweet silk
And dream only life and past
And at the breast alone madness as snakes!
Andromache sold to Helenus,
Cassandra slain by Clytemnestra,
For Helen's coveted kiss alone!
That she may perish from the breast
In her breasts according to fate's decree!
And what goddess could resist this curse?
Ulysses departed from poor Menelas,
When he saw the poppy-flowered gate,
There came to him the old man Tiresias,
Who once saw Athena in the bath.
And therefore nightly like the Hyperborean
His eyes wandered, and therefore he was a seer.
His eyes turned inwards,
He saw the image of nameless woe
In a land of sorrowful tears:
The black queen Persephone!
Because she ate the seeds of the pomegranate,
She now sat with her deadly husband.
O red fruit with thy golden seeds,
How very tempting thou wast to look upon!
There was the black lady before the ladies
Beguiled like lightly beguiled women
And that goddess through the earth's crack
Drove into the darkness of the realm of the dead.
O king of all gods! save us
From eternal damnation in Hades!
Cried aloud the seer, his mouth agape.
Help us from the dreadful state‘s
Prison into the sun our saviour Heracles -
Is that his name? - are you sure of that?
Yes, Heracles, it was he who had gone
Down into the realm of the dead below,
To conquer the centaur people,
The horse-footed ones, and into
The colourful garden of Athens
The Greek king Theseus, to the myrrh.
When Heracles led Theseus into the light
With the sign of the staff in his hand,
Theseus saw the face of Aurore
And saw the lonely land of life
And went to the Platonic Academy
And honoured Sophia, and loved her!
MINERVA
And Telemachus had a vision,
Visions had young Telemachus,
He saw the Zeus-begotten maiden's light
And heard her voice softly aching,
She bade him softly turn from the path,
Away from the disordered desire.
And Telemachus went into a quiet valley
In the south of Ithaca, in solitude,
In solitude, went, in his soul's torment,
Went and sought healing for his sorrow
And sought healing in Minerva's grove,
There he sat in the grove all alone.
Olive trees were everywhere
And tall dark pines in avenues.
The sun's red ball had sunk
And light breezes of warm nights were blowing.
And what did he know in his youth,
Young Telemachus, of true virtue?
Forgive me, Minerva, white barn owl,
If we sacrificed to thee two turtledoves!
We brought thee the pine-stick's column,
And you, you wanted nothing but our faith,
O wise maiden with the shield!
But we believe thee to be the good, the mild,
Telemachus said, and went to a hill
And there plucked the green herb of the goddess.
As if the wings of a barn owl were rustling
He was at one, he looked around,
Then he saw a light foot walking
And thought it was the genius of his life.
And Telemachus went to the rocky cave,
Which there of black rock, of green moss
Flowered. As if his own soul bloomed
As in the niche a white rose
So faithful to his father's help!
How he loved the maiden's faithful mind!
And Telemachus spoke his heart's consecration
To Zeus' daughter, wisdom's queen:
All thy child's error forgive him
And present me to Jove with a faithful mind,
With mine also the hearts of my neighbours
Present to the most glorious and the most high!
For my mother I beseech thee, the blond one,
Take her as your heart's friend,
The father's kingdom reach to the horizon,
So bless the godly man,
Forgive him Zeus the sea's fault
And look mercifully on Ulysses' forbearance.
Embrace Laertes, whose flame of life
With his spouse's embers burns together,
And take her to thee, my nurse,
Whom my lip calls with reverence:
Grandmother of my heart, Polyxena!
O take hold of her, Minerva!
Then night had appeared to him in the cave
Minerva in the armour of silver shine,
With her shield of blue, her face full of grace,
Around her left hand an olive wreath
She appeared in the cave of mischief
Alone to the pious worshipper Telemachus.
Around her rose the dawn,
Palm fronds waved, and her hand
Gave blessing to Telemachus' prayers.
Now she stood transformed before him,
The goddess there in pure white linen
And blue ribbon before Telemachus' senses.
And through her left hand ran the long cord
With many knots and olive stones.
The wise one loved nature
Of green gardens and of bright stars
And saw in the ethereal building
Father Zeus enthroned in the ethereal building!
Minerva was called up,
By his father and Telemachus,
Then she stepped purely on Diotima's steps
To love's nuptial chamber
In the secret of that supreme good -
Telemachus thought of Adonis' blood -
And barn owl flew and white cloud
And silver shone the olive tree,
And Ithaca with its sleepy people
Awoke from sleep with its dream
And felt the glory of Minerva.
And Telemachus saw her white dress flee away.
Once more the wise one let see
The greenish flowing olive wreath,
That around Telemachus it twined and rolled
And wind him in wisdom's splendour,
Who before holy heroes
Blown to her Father Jove's throne!
O glorious Minerva, wise one,
Virgin from the head of Zeus sprung,
With olive tree and with vine, my field
Bless me who have sung thee praise,
And give bread from the carob tree
And let me see thee, queen, in a dream.
The wise lover, Philios,
Calls thee Sophia, supreme ideal,
He calls thee unsullied by lust
And temple of divine wisdom, house and hall,
Which in Jove‘s own bridal chamber
Waits for thy darling Telemachus.
Olives and owls are thy signs,
Thou quietly shut up olive garden,
From which the barn owls never depart.
I will henceforth await my death
In thy pure virgin‘s sign of victory,
O Pallas' shield, the shield of the victorious.
And Zeus gave her to us as an olive garden,
Which lonely handed us carob,
When we stood by the monkey tree for counsel,
She was blue evening red,
To bequeath wisdom to our hearts,
Which passed in Adonis' dying.
O queen of wisdom, give songs!
Of life we sing, of battle and glory
And of immortality and victory
And consecrate to thy purity‘s sanctuary
All our man-killing war's weapons,
We pledge to thee today at the tree of apes.
You lead our weapons' cause of battle
With the unchallenged shield of Pallas.
At your feet the dragon writhes
And you stand proud, grace's graven image,
On a golden sickle in the sun's robe -
O stand by us in our wandering woe!
Thou dost rule all the wars of the world
And battle of demon and genius
And our passion as thou pleasest,
O Zeus! you subdued at her foot
The python with the slobber in his liver
And the Adonis murderer too, the boar.
To command Greece and Asia
Thou hast set her on the highest mountain,
Then she gave us a commandment: Keep peace,
O peace with yourselves and with the world
And with the Father Zeus, who sent me
To lead his own into Elysium's land!
So I will come to you one day
And sing to you the fourth of the eclogues:
O love, O love Daphnis, all you pious ones,
Dear Daphnis has never deceived you,
For, strange enough! From Minerva's womb
Has sprung the sacred shoot of the gods!
ULYSSES' WEDDING
Ulysses be blessed! Ithaca's
With green wreath crowned king he,
Who for all Helen's sin
Perils through the troubled sea,
Who wisely overcame that boasted city
And carried the maiden on the ship's prow!
Ulysses be blessed! All hills
And all the valleys yield rich fruit,
In the olive rustles the dove's wing.
He resisted at the bay of the sea
And had but one longing, one goal:
The homeland, sea-fringed asylum!
Blessed be Ulysses! His homeland -
With all the hills that slept in the morning,
With every nymph that lusts glue,
With all barn owls and olives -
Blessed be he who is its king.
And around him of everlasting love‘s may!
Ulysses was the king of Ithaca,
To whom all the islands brought tribute,
Vases from Sparta brought Menelas,
In Crete's goblets came the blood of the vine,
From Alexandria came parchments,
From the nymph Menthe came the veil of Orange.
Ulysses was the king of Ithaca,
Who loved India and Iberia even more,
Who saw in a dream the image of Helen
In the golden apple orchard of Hesperia
And called it the fair image
Of God's beauty, sweet and mild.
Ulysses was the name of the king of Ithaca,
He gave bread and wine to his people,
Who was like earth to the green grass
And like the morning star in the morning light.
And in Ulysses' Ithaca just now
Aurore rose in rosy tissues.
The Greeks' morning star, a genius
And good spirit sent by the eternal Theos -
Himeria I call thee and sing greeting
To thee as the diadem of fair Aurore.
And Aurore spread her blue mantle
Over the slender tree with white almonds.
O almond blossom, white and rose-red,
O tree's leaves, foliage's green veil,
O star with thy ray's light plumb,
The heavens celebrate thy peace,
When to the sound of a bird you
Appear with lovely grace, fair and chaste.
The horizon's dusky blue velvet
Embroidered with a single diamond!
Thy halo and thy crown flaming
And silent are all the corybanths
And all the agitated tumultuous dance
Comes to peace before thy gleam!
How chastely, with what secret silent shame
Hast thou veiled thee with the bower green.
Where was the fair bride to the bridegroom?
Absent was her feast celebrated,
There sang to heaven a love-lyre
And to his treasure in the foliage's veil.
Himeria, Himeria, oh, oh,
Himeria, you beautiful bride!
Seeing thee makes the soul still and glad,
Yes, you were seen by Telemachus in the morning,
Then thou barest thyself under the green arbour,
In which the dove rests so peacefully.
And when the dove's call was quiet
And silent, Ulysses' son heard close by
A voice's cry, which swelled darkly,
And a maiden's laugh: Ha ha ha!
No one did his eye see there,
But she was near, Himeria, the bride!
And at Ulysses' wedding feast with
Penelope, the Ithacaean bride,
The three graces appeared; fine cut
Of the gauze, that they might be seen fair,
So they danced and stood still
And handed apples, not to be resisted.
They handed ripe red apples there,
And the healthfulness of the bounty.
Heaven's children there on Ithaca
In full joy on the meadow jumped.
The curly hair fell about their cheeks,
That swayed in dance like glowing veils.
How your eyes looked darkly glowing,
The faces woven in the hair,
Like night the hair and like morning,
That fell on their breasts to praise,
That like melodies softly waved
And from the bosom's shroud they sprang.
How your shoulders, your arms flowed,
The whole line trembled so softly,
The body was beautiful in its soul's charm,
The limbs were lovely, the souls graceful,
They gave themselves completely, with fair faces.
They danced with the grace of dolphins.
Then these graces danced to the harbour
And sailed away in a sailboat,
To sleep at night on the sea under the moon.
And in the morning to gaze at the dawn,
In Stella Matutina, Stella Maris
In homage to the goddess Aphrodite.
And when they landed with their boat
It was on the Tagus, in the land of Lu.
In the mimosa trees it glowed red
In the morning, Eos held out her white hand,
With wreaths of roses entwined in red,
She held out her white hand, her heart in glory.
Ulysses anointed himself in his bath,
Having washed his heroic body,
Then he took a robe from the ark,
A purple robe with fine stitches,
He brushed his teeth with horsetail,
Which gleamed like white sanguine swans.
His beard was manly rich, yet neat,
His torso a man's breast,
He put on the pearl necklace
With which the goddess he knew to honour,
He put the ring on his hand, the slender one,
Then he went to the open sea, the wavering one.
Then he cried into the distance: Sea, O sea,
Girded by the eternal Oceanus,
A mirror to all the stars,
O mother, who has burdened me,
O star of the sea, lead me, spirit-laden,
As I await my dear bride.
Penelope came from the green land
In white dress and blue girdle
Carried to Ulysses on the beach,
Where he was joined to the glorious one,
The epitome of all loveliness,
The deepest source of his bliss.
Then Penelope stepped in her veil,
In the green, green as the olive leaves,
To her bridegroom's wedding feast,
And around her swarmed little gods of love,
Envoyed genii, ardent erotes,
In praise of the Fair Lady of the Cyprians.
For when he had betrothed his bride,
Married to himself, the Ithacian hero,
Ulysses then said, Our love crowns
The beautiful mother with the child Eros,
In you, Penelope, is near to me
The heavenly beauty of Urania.
VENUS IS COMFORTED WITH ROME
And Telemachus went on a long journey
And came to Gaul to the sea's breast.
He listened to the blue Mediterranean song
And sucked childish delight full of lust,
As he lay at Eucharis' bosom -
Like David at the breasts of Abishag.
But the goddess Venus, full of sorrow,
Went to father Jove, and tickled his beard,
Now Troy's wall is sunk in dust
And Asia stares before blood and corpses,
Mother Asia was shattered
By that war of sin for Helen!
How shall not my tears flow there,
That love has made all barbarians,
The lovers are but shadows of sighs,
The living now in Hades,
But where, in all this voluptuous rage,
Is the true ardour of my son's love?
How shall I not weep, O father, before thee,
When I see the foolish poets,
How they weep for the great fall of bricks
And weep for mother Asia's woe
And have such a sorrow in their bosom
And choose the blackest of the muses?
Salvation has come from my bosom,
That will become a painful calamity to many,
From my son Cupid came the arrow,
The arrows all aim at the hearts,
Then weak men feel this wound -
And become mad as bitches and dogs!
What destruction has been wrought
The men for the sake of the One Beautiful Grace?
That Homer has scarcely spelled out,
Whether I am to blame for this?
Can a goddess be accused of guilt?
Must not every nation on earth pay homage to her?
The father of Sol and Luna, Venus' father,
The father of all lights thundering spoke,
I lead thee, daughter, by my genius,
I speak in my heart's bridal chamber
With Cupid's mother whom I love and honour
And to whose star the seas are subject!
With Troy the old time has sunk,
The time of sin's war and battle's tumult,
When to me stank the stench of flesh,
The blood of corpses cried up to me in the sky.
And voices called from the bosom of death
To Cronos, to Father Uranos!
Yes, salt shall salt! Salty is the sea,
From which you were born pure and undefiled,
You emerged, virgin! Cupid is the lord
Of lovers chosen
To a wedding dance and feast of love -
O lead them, O Queen of the Sea!
Though Troy has sunk, yet Rome's gates,
Rome's gates, golden and full of force,
O enter thou into Rome's green gardens,
Let thy gracious image by the sea bay
Gaze, like marble of Carrara pure,
And thy eyes blue gems!
O ride on the shell on the Tiber
And tread sweetly on the Aventine!
Take Cupid with you, that evermore my love
Let the myrtle bushes bloom under the moon
And blue flowers in the green gardens,
Where poets walk in the footsteps of the Muses.
And stand ever by Rome's fountain
And take sesterces for the return.
Stand thou, shielded from Rome's thousand suns,
In the Vatican, in the bosom of thy limbs,
In thy limbs ivory and marble.
Take heed, your breast will be wounded by Cupid!
Bathed in honey milk, washed with soap,
Beauty washed in the perfume of the Orient!
The ripeness of the rose is yours for the oil,
Crown thy breasts with clusters of myrrh
And anoint thee with sweet aloes,
O Pharos mare, slender brown, dun.
Earrings we made and silver chains
And onyx stones we gave to the fair one,
We would bed her in velvet and silk
And bedposts to decorate and gild
And hang blue skies above the bed
To the queen of dreams and songs.
And then Venus grew pale and turned to stone,
All beauty became hard marble.
The Vatican Venus stood alone
In the golden temple of the Muses, where Cupid
In the colourful image wore the eye-shell.
Then spoke the Tiburtine Sibyl:
Another, more beautiful image of a woman is coming,
A divine child she holds in her arms:
The gracious one is she, full of grace,
Her son fills the earth with pity,
Her son, he brings the beautiful mother,
The Virgin, who suffered for all men.
O Lord, I am still yours,
And thy death my muses mourn.
In dreams you lead me to Mary's groves,
...................................................................
...................................................................
................................................................…
THIRD BOOK
THE AENEID
TROY
About the time of King David,
King Priam was King of Troy.
In the vastness of Asia
Ilion lay great with gates,
And the river Skamandros flowed before Ida,
There in the pastoral world lived Prince Paris.
And Juno and Minerva spotless
Appeared before the prince beside Charis.
And Venus wore the Stella Maris in her red hair.
The goddesses only desired to know,
Who in man's mind was the fairest.
The apple of his praise would not be missed
By Lady Juno, not free from vanity,
She stepped forth in her golden shoes
And showed the splendour of her fair majesty
And was surrounded by a peacock's cry,
The pride's sign and symbol of power,
And her golden crown above her veil laughs.
Prince Paris, son of King Priam,
Give me the prize of the apple now,
Then I'll make you a great ruler
And give thee princely power,
I'll make thee a princely shape,
I'll make you a ruler of Asia
From the banks of the Indus to the forest of Ida,
As far as the lands of Jove's lightning have seen,
For behold, the majesty of my beauty is no illusion.
Then Minerva stepped forward in a warrior's helmet,
With which she rose from her father's brow,
She gazed cunningly like a young rogue
And yet how wrathfully her eyes fly,
Her brow clouded, her thin mouth silent,
They saw her clasp her shield with her hands
And she lift the aegis to conquer,
And clashing noisily her weapons of war,
All which the Most High hath wrought for her.
Prince Paris, son of King Priam,
Give me the prize of the apple, that I may know,
Your mind is brave, proud, lofty, great,
Thy nobleness stand firm as Ida's mountains,
Then I'll give thee in every work of arms
And give thee victory in every battle with men
And give thee skill in war and strength of man
And wisdom to the just war,
For I am the fairest of them all, flying through the skies.
Then Venus stepped forward with a soft smile,
The winds blew in the curls of her hair,
Before the bewitchment the prince was a fool;
So it was with me once, so it is with all,
The singers all, and the women they please;
Then with her slender hand she fiddled
On the magic belt, and let the belt fall,
And dropped the silken robe,
And Venus stood naked before Paris in the land.
Then Paris handed her the apple,
O goddess, before the apples of thy breasts
Is this apple wizened! I am
Inflamed and fly to the realm of pleasure
And kneel before thee on the beach of Cyprus' shore:
I praise thee, sea-star Urania!
I feel as if I never knew of beauty
Until now, until I saw the beautiful beauty,
So white and manifest, so warm and naked and near!
Then the goddess lifted up her garments again,
Then said to the prince thus Urania,
Because you have praised the beauty of my limbs,
I give thee the fairest that Hellas hath seen,
I give thee Sparta's mistress Helen,
That thou mayest play with her breasts‘ doves
And be bound in her long hair, yes,
Receive her as a boon for thy faith,
Therefore I permit thee to steal Helen!
And angry Juno rushed away in the veil,
Minerva followed her with her shield,
And Venus, built like a lyre,
Left the prince, smiling sweet and mild,
The archetypal idea of every fair image.
And he set out on his sea voyage
And sailed through the Mediterranean, the desolate,
There was revealed to him Sparta's mistress,
Who, after all, was mated to her husband.
But Paris, at the goddess' bidding, stole away
The fair Helen of Sparta,
Because he thought he was in the right by Venus,
He acted outspokenly and wantonly
As an adulterer lasciviously-songfully,
And brought her to high Ilion,
And honeyed her navel
And hotly wooed her in Pergamum
And lay with her at midnight as Venus' son.
But Menelaus, Helen's confidant,
Together he summoned a fleet of Greeks,
A wrathful, a sprightly graying,
To avenge this scorn of this mockery.
Achilles stepped forth from a sea-cave,
To avenge the dishonour done to Greece,
Achilles, like the wrath of a god,
Ready with his weapon to speak death
And break Troy's ancient walls in the dust.
Fair Venus went about in the ether,
She thought little of the grey husband,
Did not keep the statutes of the fathers,
She desired only to be married to a god,
But not to the artisan with the shadow
On his chin and cheeks, whiskers grey.
She wanted to blossom on the flower mats,
As a flower drink a god's dew.
Devotion and receiving is the woman's way.
Vulcanus forged with his hammer
The art of the gods, richly ornamented.
But he always sat lonely in the chamber
And knew no embers but furnace embers.
All his blood was devoted to ashes,
His life was spent in creating and forging,
But not so much for his wife and her brood,
He wanted to create only in peace
And let nothing of Venus' quick tongue offer.
But she, hot with burning desire,
Desired only a true man,
Who could not resist her ardour of love,
He should fall for her, should then
Devote to her all that he can and does,
All his heroism, all his strength.
It was all the same to her whether he pondered in the nights,
Only that he should lie down with her in the nights
And go out early in the morning to the work of arms.
Mars was the right man, the god of wars,
Who mightily controlled the battles,
The lord of defeats and victories,
The muscular god with armour plumes,
To whom all nations made bloody sacrifices,
He flexed his manly muscles,
So that Venus was consumed with hot languor
And glowed hotly in feelings of spring,
He should drill his spear into her disc.
He lay with her - we'll keep quiet about the way,
For who would see Venus at the act of love?...
Cupid lasciviously smiled and softly,
The founder of adulterous marriages,
The father of procreation and the lord of labour,
The eye of God when a couple mates,
God Eros - who can resist him?
The goddess, though shadowed by adultery,
Yet lay so merry, after great lust weary.
But Vulcanus heard of the sin
And went to make a fine golden net,
That he might bind the goddess and the sinner.
Out of revengeful desires his fire cracked
Like red dragons on Etna below,
Then he called all the celestials together
To laugh at the dull adulterers!
The gods swam blissfully in laughter
And Venus was ashamed of the too hot flames.
Then Venus looked at the battlefield
And looked at Priam and his sons
And Paris looked at the high mildness
And to her own son the fair one looked,
Looked to Aeneas that she might crown him
With her grace that she gave to Anchises.
Then Venus turned with a moan of pleasure
To Vulcanus, that he might consider the man,
Aeneas a shield from his heaven lower.
But she saw Vulcanus wavering in his heart,
So she went to beguile her husband,
He shall shudder with love at her grace,
Before her gaze swear her everlasting love,
Before her fount roar like a roebuck,
So she caught him with blinding white arm,
To tease him with caresses,
To ingratiate herself with the loveliest charm:
I am the flame of love! does not your heart grow warm?
He felt the fire flash through him,
Desire burned in his veins,
As Venus gazed with enchantment,
Her blue eyes filled with tears,
He couldn't help longing for her love,
The longing shook all his limbs,
Before her breasts he was heard to moan,
The full breasts, not laced with the bodice,
Then, overcome, he sank down before the goddess!
The power of Venus was like a thunderstorm
With downpours, thunderstorms, lightnings.
And all was sweet to him that ever was bitter,
His blood he was ready to sweat out for her
Before those rays from the slits of her eyes
And melt in the flame of love,
To sit burnt in her lightning's flash,
There was seen this god of Etna's rock
Rolling before her in electric rapture!
She was aware of the power of her beauty
And set about pleading with the god,
Thou my delight, my lust, my love, my desire,
Not only slipped into my arms for nothing,
To rest in the midst of my breasts,
Thou shalt make a work for my darling.
Aeneas has walked in the field,
You make him invincible good weapons!
So she said, gathering her skirt with her hand.
Bound by endless desire
Her husband did everything to please her.
She no longer wanted to refuse him,
Then he fell into her lap.
The winds storm and the seas surge,
Clouds rain and rocks burst,
Doves coo, nightingales melt,
Snowflakes melt high on Olympus,
Then the fire was seen rolling in the Mediterranean.
Satisfied, Vulcanus soon set himself
To his work, the artful shield.
He made the Scamandros, Ida's forest,
The whole Asiatic plain,
The image of the star of Venus watches over it,
Which sent its rays upon the sea,
That surged wild on the rocks of Cyprus,
A ship sailed through the Mediterranean,
At its helm stood Aeneas, full of hope.
Vulcanus made beautiful bird-women,
Who, like Ulysses the sirens, lured
With birdsong and the beauty of their bodies
Aeneas, whose breaths are stilled.
Vulcanus made nymphs without socks,
Panisques, Fauns and the man Silen,
Dionysus lay weary in flower bells
And looked at the flower, the shoe of Venus.
He made also a likeness of Aeneas' genius.
He made Tyre, Sidon and Carthage
And made a beautiful woman,
The grace from the Orient, Imago
Dei, the soul beautiful in the beautiful body.
Vulcanus made this a pastime
And yet sibylline was this image.
Calliope, in this poem write me,
As Dido prophesies Vulcanus' shield,
The virgin queen so fair and mild of grace!
Then Vulcanus' shield showed Sardinia
And showed also death's dark gate.
Italy in beautifully curved lines
From the shield of the volcano emerged.
O Muse, write with the scribe's ear
And sing to your muses' kisses
The praises of Italy in genial choirs
And praise in ecstatic effusions
Rome! which the holy poets must love.
Vulcanus formed the emperor's image,
Blessed by the fair star of the seas,
Who there triumphed in Actium's field,
Who broke the rebel's spear,
The wooer of the Egyptian hetaera,
The serpent that knew a thousand men.
There sank with force and weight of fate
The whore's rule from the Orient,
And a virgin ruled in the Occident.
And so the walls of Troy came tumbling down,
The Greeks triumph over the Asiatics,
The castle of the paramour under showers of flame
Burning and the forests and the seeds
And the allies, the sacrilegious states,
And Greece and its freedom triumph.
In dust sank splendour and potentates,
The images of the gods lie in ruins,
The women cradle dead sons in their arms.
But Asia will live, Asia
Will preserve its sacred culture
And under the blessing of Urania
Save itself from the burning dangers
And as sheltered under Venus' hair
The nurse and the father and the son
Save themselves from the fire. There were
Urania and Cupid on the throne
Gods of protection, mocking the retaliatory procession.
Then the son carried the father on his back
From Troy's walls, from hell's circle,
Guided by the goddess' gentle gaze
He passed through all the fires hot with flame,
Extinguishing the fire with the sweat of blood,
For his father's salvation he suffered flames,
But hotter his heart glows white with love,
Love's white glow swam through him,
So son and father came together to the sea.
Burnt, scorched, sooty on their garments,
So they stood trembling by the Mediterranean
With a little brotherhood of sorrow
And thanked God! Who was their saviour, who?
The Most High sent his army of genii,
To save Anchises and the pious son.
The pious son piously thanked very much
The Most High in the heavenly places,
To lie down in the power of his glory.
The evening star shone beautifully,
Aeneas thought of his guide,
Who smiled so sweetly on him from afar,
And prayed, O high queen,
Queen of love and heaven's sovereign,
I consecrate my poverty and need to thee,
My highest treasure art thou, but I am
A poor nothing, I am more dead than dead,
Urania, lead me to the new dawn!
I will go on pilgrimage through the floods of the sea
And follow the star of the sea forever.
My heart glows with your pure ardours,
Fertile mistress, from the core of my soul,
From the core of my soul a kingdom blossoms,
I will place under your rule.
A new Asia I will found in the distance,
I will found you on the seventh hill.
At your bosom I am as still as an infant.
And in the silence he heard a whispering
And heard a voice's soft sound.
Before him the waves of the Mediterranean ripple
In the soft darkness of silence,
Then the goddess said, My beloved son,
I'll guide your ship on my mercy's stream,
To teach thee in the red poppies
Of dreams, lo, I lead thee to Rome,
There build thou a cathedral for Stella Maris!
DIDO
Aeneas went to Delos' sanctuary,
To question the bright son of the Most High.
A girl brought a pink flower
To Aeneas with mournful lament,
With hope, too, that tomorrow would come.
Aeneas offered this flower
To the sun of justice. There lay
Other offerings too, rich and scarce.
The eye of the sun looked down from heaven.
Aeneas now entered the temple,
In the holy of holies the priestess
Seated on a three-chair, with God alone,
She gave herself to God's revelation,
Who spoke with voice not to her mind,
But while in her heart with prayers
Honouring the Son of the Most High,
God's words sound in the depths of her heart
As sweetly as the winds whispered in May.
Then she closed her eyelids in rapture
And did not see the marble statue
And yet the beautiful marble-like limbs
And like the sun light a face
And saw in her inner vision
The sun's rays, a golden stream,
And a white hand of pure light,
And a cloud fragrant as aroma
And God's fingers pointing to distant Rome.
I am, said the god, the bright sun
Of wisdom, beauty and justice,
To the pilgrim I will be life, hope and delight
On his pilgrimage and be his companion.
The pilgrim consecrates himself to the Great Mother,
But where is she? He shall seek the Mother
Whom his people's fathers before time
Worshipped in the silent grove of the beeches
With incense and prayers and sultana cakes.
Leave the old mother Asia,
Then you will find Asia, the mother!
Trust in Queen Urania,
Who is sweet as the bees around the lime trees,
But you must not bind yourself to Venus either,
For I will lead thee to the Magna Mater,
But the Magna Mater blots out no sins,
Therefore I'll lead thee to the tragic theatre
And to the word of the Virgin: I am yours!
But do not be mistaken, for it is not in Crete,
For not in Crete do wait the Parcenes and Urania
Nor in Sicily's green garden
Nor in the land of Cleopatra
And in the arm of the new Helen.
You only sail on my stream of grace!
The Mother waits in Italy,
Her heart you adore in white Rome,
Who binds with the girdle of all the atoms!
Thus spoke the god through his priestess,
Aeneas' soul trembled with excitement:
I set out on the sea voyage, I am
A ship in fatalistic motion,
Law of fate, chance's refutation,
I will sail in spite of the gods' wrath,
For a deity cherishes me in the heed
Of the charis of God! Hope is my saviour
And carries me to the goal through all storm and weather.
Anchises, father, come with us on the ship,
We'll carry tomorrow's land to the west.
And bird-women also lurk on the reef,
The bread in our hands will be stained,
Our wits will go mad with the wrath of the gods,
We believe in blessings beyond measure,
In adversity we remain in grace,
The charisma of God shines on our paths,
Till piglets lay their teats on a wild sow.
It is the wild beast from the dark forest,
No other embodies motherhood
In such an energetic and powerful form,
It is the mother of all heroic power,
Of sacred and high passion.
The mother enters the battle with strength
And will free us from the custody of the enemy,
With mighty stamping will she reign
Protecting the piglets in the midst of the dust.
And this motherly warrior
Becomes for us the epitome of fertility.
As her children we give ourselves
To the tenderness of the mother's teat.
Well then, my soul is ready!
The piglets that clung to her teats,
Are men from the future, from time,
As we rush to the sacrificial meal of the table,
As we in hot hunger devour the table too!
Aeneas' ship arrived in Epirus,
Where the waves shudder on the sea's edge,
There ruled the king Helenus,
He was still seen mourning for old Troy,
But he rebuilt the walls of Epirus
As the walls of Troy, the image
Of Troy, built by stonecutters,
Troy stood in the Epirusian clime
And yet was not so proud and strong and great!
O son of Priam, O Helenus,
You cannot build Ilion on a small scale,
The capital of all Asiatics
Must have a new face to behold
Like Jove's castle at dawn
In Olympos' pure summit snow.
Yes, God descends, that is my trust,
The god-built marble city's idea!
In the vision I already see the foundation of Rome!
Aeneas and Anchises and the host
Went on through the Mediterranean tide.
The star of the sea was above them,
Around which the stars were circling cheerfully,
It shone white as snow and red as embers
And sent down its bright ray,
To guide the way through the waters' fury,
The way through the flood mountain and the ebb valley.
They had fresh water and meat for supper.
In the morning Aurore walked in the Orient
With golden sandals up the hill,
Praying the morning's beautiful Hour,
Such as no poet could ever invent.
Aurora then walked in the East
And from her cornucopia, from her womb
The diamond dew on woman and man,
And down let the mild immaculate one
On the shore of Tunisia lilies white and red.
Then Aeneas landed on the beach
And bowed down with his face
And lay with his forehead in the white sand
In a cloud all of golden light,
Speaking from the depths of his heart,
O womb of the dawn, horn of plenty, source,
O queen of heaven, thy hair is all about
Transfiguring my soul in the sun,
Then I foresee thy coming, O giver of delight!
Then Aeneas saw a woman approaching,
In the goatherd's simple robe of cloth
She walked through the young morning's sky-blue,
The paths led her before Aeneas,
And, as if to entertain the man,
She held the pitcher of water, some bread.
She led him to a shrub of myrtle,
To thirst and hunger's craving
She gave a smile from her lips rose-red.
Aeneas saw the oval face,
The skin beautifully tanned by the sun,
On her cheek brown a beauty mark,
The eyes gleamed as if dewy with lust,
Her dark eyes looked seductive
Through long lashes brownish and curved.
To whom this woman would be given as bride,
Fate would be gracious to him,
He would have entered the blissful realm!
Aeneas felt a deep secret lust,
Love called the dead from their graves!
His gaze slid secretly to her breast,
How he would like to lift the cloak,
He saw the belt around her hips.
And her slender feet brown ankle.
Around this woman was a beguiling perfume,
All was rose, nowhere thorn or nettle.
Then she sat down on a stone armchair.
She spoke, In the Phoenician region
Dido of Tyre lived, fair and young,
Her brown locks were long and wild,
And long were the brown eyelashes too.
Sychaeus was her husband, with sanctification
Of the priest a consecrated union they lived,
In happiness and loving enthusiasm.
But sore at heart from jealousy
Was Dido's brother, a jackal, a desert dog.
He overthrew Sychaeus from the royal throne
And cut down Tyre's royal tree.
Fallen is Tyre's majesty already,
The purple sank into the grey foam of the sea,
The ships barely held in the water,
As wild waters roll upon the planks,
Then Dido dreamed a visionary dream,
That her brother resented her life,
But Africa awaits her crown of gold.
O Prince of Tyre, sovereignty full of pride,
Like morning stars thy imperial vassals,
Thou royal cedar in the wood,
Thou didst speak wisdom in the high halls,
I have seen the prince in the garden of Eden,
But woe to thee, how thou art gone down!
And fallen into the black realm of the dead!
Ruby and gold's splendour will not help thee,
The fire burns thee, the serpents bite thee!
But Dido and the loyal people fled
From Tyre, fled from the threatening tyrant,
They fled from the evil threat of murder,
They let themselves be banished by the tyrant,
The queen and her loyal men,
For somewhere a kingdom awaits them!
So the queen sailed from there
And gave herself up to the hard times
And yet hoped for the blissful garden!
But how the sea burned with rage
And hurled the ship in wild waves,
The tide of the sea rose to the heavens
And plunged into the abyssal hells,
Then howled the demon companions,
But genii rejoiced on the foam's crown,
The wild seals of the sea lord barked,
But help sends the maiden from the throne
Of the moon, her faithful servant's reward.
The servant of the Queen of Heaven
Was thus saved from the maw of the abyss,
The maiden led her friend
To Africa, which lies in the sea,
To Tunisia, to be exact. And where better,
O Aeneas, could you have landed,
Than in the fair Dido's kingdom? There bets
Cupid with Venus: soon Dido will burn,
She has only to know the Trojan Aeneas!
Then Venus rose again into the sky.
But Aeneas and all the men
Entered the Tunisian bustle curious,
To the marketplace in front of the ramparts,
Where little children played with the ball,
Where beggars sat, women held fruit,
As priests came out of the temple hall
And still felt the blessing of their deity,
Before whom the wisest played like pure children.
They entered through the gates in the hall
And went to the princely palaces,
In the middle of it all stood the Hall of Kings,
Adorned with colourful banners as at feasts,
All was ready to receive guests,
The officers stood there with swords,
The servants stood in embroidered waistcoats,
There came Aeneas with the emissaries
From Asia, who found Africa hospitable.
Then they stepped forward to the royal throne,
Aeneas came forward to the throne alone.
The queen's robe was red as poppies,
A Moor fanned her with refreshment,
Ornamental birds twittered sweetly in chorus.
Aeneas waited with holy patience,
Till Dido spoke words to his ear,
Here impatience would be like guilt,
Then Dido nodded her head full of grace.
You are welcome here in Africa,
Carthage, Sheba, Cush and Ofir are
All rejoicing that Aeneas is here today,
We will renew this feast yearly.
You need not be afraid of me, the queen,
For I myself am like the gazelle,
But gazelles are the prey of the lions.
Around Dido shone the brightness of the evening
And baptised every spot with the blood of the sun.
And as she sat in the blue twilight, Dido,
There came in the romance's blue hour
From the golden star of Venus Cupid,
Invisible to all men round,
And inflicted on Dido the most grievous wound
That ever a woman's heart had to bear.
And sighs fled from her red mouth,
The mild minstrel, the weary and faint,
Was but a shadow of sighs in the blue dusk.
But mindful of her royal honours
She was completely concealed from her beloved,
In her heart she shut up her desire
And only sighed out of sheer dissatisfaction
And had to resign herself to a heavy fate,
That she knew her love unrequited.
So cruel Cupid's sharp arrows fly
And work unwillingness next to sweet desire,
Indifference and deep love in the breast.
But fire cannot be hidden in the pocket of a coat,
Nor burning love in the eye.
The queen of Carthage turned to ashes
And turned back to flame.
Fate bent her neck hard.
Aeneas, my life, my delight,
Aeneas, you my breath, you my happiness!
To thee my eyes' fountain of tears gushes,
All my night hopes only for thee, O God's sun!
To thee I consecrate my kingdom and my empire,
To thee I consecrate my soul and my blood!
I have no more soul, for at once,
As soon as I saw thee, it melted into embers,
My soul melted into tears,
But your soul, Lord, is now mine!
Thus speaks to thee a woman in love's rage,
She is nothing more, is nothing but wholly thine,
That thy majesty may unite with her nothingness!
All fair one! see me in humility devoted
To thee, my Lord, the supreme divinity's image,
Real sign thou of God's life,
Look upon me with grace and mercy,
Be my people's dove, our shield,
Be thou anointed with the myrrh of Africa
And reign in the African clime!
But Aeneas only listened with half a thought
(Thought whether cows were calving in Troy).
Then the messenger came to him from Jove's castle
With wings on sandals and a staff
And invisible to the people. His eye blazed
And softly the genius spoke, I have
The call of God to thee: To the praise of God
Thou shalt not seek the woman that is near,
Thou shalt seek her that is afar. Over the grave,
The fisherman's grave I saw the mistress smile,
To her go thou straight to Italy!
Aeneas with the crew stepped to the ship
And sailed away with full sails.
And Dido, the epitome of beauty,
Desired the port of the kingdom of the dead,
The Elysian's haven
And for the Acherusian waters.
Then she said a last word, parting,
When through the vein the sharp knife cut
And Hades, the man-eater, was already approaching her.
No blessing rests on thee from my mouth!
I shall see you and yours triumphant,
You and yours, in Europe's round
Triumph and victory omnipresent there
And Africa close to starvation!
But on white elephants will come
The ruler from black Africa!
How proudly your high Alps stood,
Rome will be crushed by barbarians of all lands!
HADES
Aeneas came to the promised land,
But the father and Aeneas' nurse
Different on the long journey. On the beach
Aeneas now stoked the sacrificial flame
And took the flesh from a sacrificial flame
And sacrificed to atone for the dead.
Then he leaned against the cypress trunk
And looked over the wavy dunes
To the dark sea, which resembled the stage of tragedy.
Ye dark gods below, ye light gods above,
O send on my way the guide!
I will praise, praise with way and change,
Fate's eternity, with heart and mind
I surrender to the power of the Most High!
But now, good God, I know no further,
As if in a labyrinth I am,
Life seems hard to me and death seems cheerful.
Send a genius down the ladder of heaven!
And must I, to find the good way,
Even through the dark night and torment of hell,
Am I ready, may I but join
To the sea-star above my fate's wave!
O virgin, queen and goddess! Bright,
The realm of the dead becomes bright in your shimmer!
I am a poor foolish fellow
With a deep night in my heart's room,
Send thy messenger! I am yours forever!
And the Sibyl with wrinkled face
Changed came in her old age.
Aeneas, become shadow, become nothing,
Then the soul's butterfly will unfold.
The path to dark death is a cold and hard one,
And hard path, but hot be thou in heart!
Prophets play their psalteries below,
Virgins walk by consecrated candles.
There is the writing of fate written in the ores.
But death says to all the doorknockers,
Who look forward to Lethe's green waters,
They must make atonement, they must make sacrifice,
Purified, they must consecrate themselves to God.
Then they need not fear Hades,
When they are anointed with the oil of myrrh,
Then old Hades will renew them
And give them new birth in the cave of death
And release them: colourful butterfly of soul!
So let us consecrate the white turtledove
To the high Jove and the sprout!
Trinitarian is Fate, as I believe,
Which I have tasted of Wisdom's sweet milk,
That flowed from her mother's breasts.
And if you dare, drink the blood of the lamb,
That flowed in a stream from the side of the lamb,
For therein dwelleth the bounty of God.
But now down, Aeneas, have good courage!
And open stood the gate of Tartarus,
A chasm and a maw and a gorge,
In which flowed the waters of oblivion,
The fountain of nothingness from the mouth of death.
We who live on the face of the earth,
We live melancholy or cheerful,
We must at the appointed hour
Down the tunnel of great darkness,
As shadows of souls into mystery and wonder.
We fear as we fear a dog,
As if the sharp dog had three mouths.
We see snakes on the bottom of the abyss,
We dream nightmares on the bed of death,
As if a demon were binding us by chains,
As if worm and rat would devour us.
The pious pray a requiem,
Then felt the oil of grace the soul's shadow,
Who had a longing for eternal life.
On the sad and dark lake of Acheron
The weeping willow bows its head in melancholy,
Like lava flows the Phlegeton,
The Lethe divides at the watershed
And shimmers beautifully like transparent silk
And there gives oblivion, only oblivion,
But also oblivion of all suffering.
But the pious celebrate masses for the dead,
They eat the bread of life for the departed.
Who will we see there again?
The blind seers will meet us,
Tiresias will meet us,
He will bless us with a prophecy.
Even if it rains down pitch and fire,
The blind seer will look to the light,
There he will those who have succumbed to death
Trust in the living Almighty:
O receive also Orpheus with his woman of women!
There we shall also meet the sufferer,
Who has passed through the desolate sea,
He will bless us with a special blessing,
The blessing of patience in dangers.
We shall also see with the most charming demeanour
Penelope, the epitome of fidelity,
That all who have been faithful in life,
That each may rejoice in her glory.
Here Circe does not turn her men into swine.
But above all Menelaus
And Helen, the beautiful Helen,
Will have escaped war and chaos.
O fair one, in the likeness of Urania,
Most lovely that Greece ever saw,
Idea of beauty, Hellas' sanctuary,
If thou art alive there, then am I there.
In humility your possession and property:
You make Elysium an Elysium!
Thus the Sibyl led through the night
Of the deep realm of the dead Aeneas.
There they saw a soul that laughs,
Bliss in the departed mind,
To die was a delicious gain.
On earth he was not beautiful, but ugly,
But now very glorious to behold
Immortality of the soul, no longer hideous
In the flesh (nor was Aspasia any longer indisposed).
And this was the Athenian Socrates,
Who raised his voice now, a dead speaker:
Now I sing like a swan in happiness, while
The dark death once came to me as a breaker
And yet did not break my faith, the revelers
At the banquet heard from me: Diotima
Gave me the cup of love and of death,
With her Wisdom I was intimate,
Now I see Urania of Paphos-Ktima.
I told the comrades when I parted,
They should not weep for my sake
In their hearts, and the swan's song
I sang to them of immortality
And died alone and in serenity
And now in Hades' antechamber I wait in silence
For that messenger from eternity,
Who will appear to deliver me:
For X.P. will arise in April!
I see the Emperor of all Romans
Making peace in the ecumene,
See him as captain of the entrepreneurs
Who, with all Rome's might, circumnavigated
Cleopatra, the moon cow on the drifts
Of Egypt on the yellow father Nile.
But I also know the writings of the ancient people,
Of high Wisdom and of her play,
Which is the beginning of life and the goal of life.
And you, Sibyl, old and grey,
You will come to Caesar one day
And tell him visions, high woman,
Which thou hast seen in fervent prayer.
For thou shalt see in the celestial cities
Of gold and lapis lazuli and jade
A little child, the highest of the prophets,
And a woman like an ark of gold,
Thou shalt announce the Mother and the Son of Grace.
And when Augustus, Lord of the Ecumene,
Shall hear this, he shall number the nations,
That he may consecrate the whole empire's wide scene
To the child, the king of all souls.
The carpenter and virgin must not be absent,
The virgin must give birth in the cave.
Magicians will go on pilgrimage with oils
And incense and gold to the little God,
Who is sad when he knows he will be mocked.
So in the time of Tiberius
The procurator Pontius Pilate
The man whom a friend's kiss betrayed
Deliver him to the evil power in the state,
Whether that man did nothing of evil,
Since that man's soul was full of purity.
But they want to crucify him. But just now,
As they resolve on the vilest wickedness,
A wife dreams dreams of seer-like subtlety.
Pontius Pilate's wife
Will stand on the Acherusian shore
And in a dream she will make a deep vision:
In my right hand a white jade
I appear to her, no harm will come to her,
I tell her the man is blameless,
Is rather God's revealed grace,
Is God's love, God's favour and God's grace.
And if he must suffer, he must suffer with patience.
The procurator's wife will awake
And will be frightened for her husband.
She sees him standing in the power of dragons
And decree crucifixion, and then
Washing his hands with the water that runs
And mingle with the blood of the righteous.
How many are under the spell of the evil one!
But for this the Supreme Good appeared,
To redeem us by the fervour of his love!
The apple of God's eye is the people of the Jews,
The flock that the Shepherd came to feed.
But terrible are the rods of the Most High
And scourges of his fury, not sweet and silken,
For his elect must suffer
For election by the great Rage.
And Rome's soldiers stride heavily through Sion
And Titus leaves behind only heaps of ruins,
But the chosen people will suffer even worse!
Ah woe, woe, I must foresee a terrible thing!
No longer captive on the waves of the Euphrates
God's people, but now through the Teutons
Judah suffers millions of hells!
For Satan's servant with devilish fellows
Will build a kingdom of horror!
But I see angels flocking together
And Israel returns home, and I can see
The Prince of Peace build his kingdom of peace.
There I see the pontiff of Rome
Going on pilgrimage to the city of Jerusalem
And drinking water from the river Jordan
And praying in the stable of Bethlehem.
Where God made the first man of clay,
There I see him giving the spirit of joy:
Be peace, peace, peace! pleasant
God alone is the peace at all ends!
But now my gaze will turn to Europe.
Europe was a virgin from
Of the Orient. She went to Tyre's beach
And thought of the old father's house
And played with the shells in the sand,
The beach in the bay was white as snow.
She was so beautiful in her delicate adornment
And long and slender the lightly tanned hand.
What mythographers say, I tell you:
The god appeared to the girl as a white bull.
On his back she swam through the floods
And landed in the harbour of Crete,
Called Phoenix, like the one that rose from the embers
And from the ashes rise. Arrived
The old shepherds with their sheep,
Each shepherd for the virgin burns
And no one wants to sleep alone any more.
The Greek and Roman continent
Now calls itself Europe after the beautiful virgin.
The same way, O my Aeneas, takes
The messenger and envoy who brings grace
From Judah to Europe. He swims
To the shore of Malta, without all harm,
He speaks in a Greek tirade
Of our marble we called gods,
But he speaks in Athens in the bath of the sun
Of the creator of all the world, the unknown,
And of the offspring, to all the world a messenger.
And he will come to Tres-Tabernae
By the boot below, through Italy striding,
Till I see him on the Appian Way,
Where Roman women walk sweet and silken,
And he will feed them as his lambs
And invite them all to the sacrificial table.
In the imperial garden he will suffer
And hear Nero's scornful hiss,
As will his brother, fisherman of all men-fish.
The fisherman had to climb into his grave
And continue to work as the shepherd of nations,
He passed his shepherd's crook
By which he graciously guided East and West Rome,
That many a shepherd the tiara adorned.
To the pontiff every virgin is a sister
And every man a brother. To him was due
That every pious man believe ever more firmly.
So also the spirit rested on Pontifex Silvester.
And then the new Helen went
To her darling in the Orient,
But this time there was no adultery,
Rightly is this woman called faithful,
For she burns in the highest love
For the bridegroom who gave himself to her.
She who knows the healing power of the cross,
She found life in the murdered man,
For on the mast of the nave vines grow.
The empress gave life to a son,
I'm talking about the Emperor Constantine.
He gave freedom to the pious
And therefore the Lord gave him victory
In the sign of Chi-Rho, which led him
And spread the rule in Rome.
In death he was baptised,
He passed away bathed in the stream of grace
And also anointed with charismatic aroma.
He bequeathed his kingdom to the Holy Father,
That all the world might be ordered to God.
In history's tragic theatre
Not even the prince is free from fate
And yet freedom, the spirit blows in May
And in the mercy seat instructs the shepherd,
Who hears the occident's loud cry,
Leads every soul to the valley of myrtle,
To the bridegroom and the beautiful highly ornamented.
And Constantine, who wrote the Confession,
Gave Greece and Rome to the Lord for his own.
A true son of the great emperor drove
Teutons who brood, ponder, keep silent,
The Britons, the Irish, the Frisians, in the round dance
Of God's people, whom the shepherd led,
Carolus Magnus, then, I will show,
Who had little respect for the Saxons,
But to whom the crown of the Franks was justly due.
Aeneas, new times I see coming,
I will praise the coming Saviour,
The time will come when the pious
In all the heathen world will be called Franks.
Now I part from thee with a faint
In love's praise of the Frankish matron,
Patroness of all Franks, of all wise men
Nurturing mother of true wisdom, on the throne
I see her smiling over me without a doubt.
To her I now commend myself and, yes,
I know you cannot know her today,
Then you shall the Morning-star and Urania
On thy far pilgrimage call her.
Alas, woe is me, I must burn in limbo,
I must sigh, I must weep, I must wait till the day,
When the great Judge comes to the threshing floors,
Then I hope, then my lament ends.
And Socrates rose in the deep sarcophagi.
Aeneas trembled in all his limbs,
Unnameable sensation full in his heart.
The Sibyl called him with joyful songs,
Made him glad with a wise jest,
They rose, they saw the starry candles,
They stepped into Italy's summer night.
And must you also suffer the pain of death,
The star of the sea watches over thy life,
The smiling lovers of heaven are laughing!
ROME
O Muse of Parnassus, look down graciously!
Thou wilt graciously bring thy gifts
And guide my pen, that I may songs
And epic poems sing,
Will my voice penetrate from the desert
Into the blinded and deaf world
And will anyone hear the sound of your wings
In a time consecrated to money,
In a time that holds nothing high and holy?
O Muse of Parnassus, your son of Muses
Received his talent from the god of poets,
The god of seers spoke from his throne
Through thy mouth that burns red with love,
On your mountain of muses in the Occident.
Here I live and here I was born,
Where no one knows holy prophets
And hardly anyone chooses true poets
And where poetry is lost to the demons!
O Muse of Parnassus, from thy mouth
The call went out to a weary one,
But thou gav'st him tidings of beauty,
All-beautiful, lighthouse by the sea in the south,
At least give the poet peace
And let me sing in my loneliness
In praise of God! And once I am gone,
Then may you on your beautiful wings
(By your kiss of the Muses!) take me to Elysium!
Apollo Musagetes! golden sun
Is thy face to me in transfiguration,
O send me delight from thy delight,
That drunk with thee may be my poem of praise!
Behold, I will praise, praise, and will not despair
In my poor lowliness despair.
O God of poets! Poetry is my duty,
I sing praise in love all my days,
In love rejoice and in love, ah, the lamentations!
Apollo Musagetes! The promise
From your temple, from your throne
I have received the praise of love,
That full of love sang a son of Muses,
In thy light is heard already.
It is written as by your hands,
Thy good pleasure is the fairest reward,
And thou shalt one day consummate thy kingdom.
O Lord, I beseech thee, let not my song end!
Apollo Musagetes! Will Homer's
Praised song ring purified
In thy kingdom? He wrote in Eros
And in the lovely, the beautiful Mother.
And will you also crown Virgil with laurel,
For he is the servant of the sun's advent?
The most glorious of all the sons of the Muses
I will praise the Florentine today.
Let my song live too, you servant of your servants!
Rome I will sing this noon hour,
Help me, my genius, my love!
Aeneas sailed in the dim hour,
But already the mouth of the Tiber was approaching.
The sea at this point a little more turbid,
For the sky in it is cloud-grey reflected,
And a grey cloud hovered over
Italy, already the dew was dripping,
Man and woman fled from the rain into the hut.
It seems to me that the gods are angry, the gods are furious,
Deny to Latium the high blessing,
They speak their wrath with thundering voices
And express their grief with rain.
How impious men walk the paths
Of the world, there is not one more consecrated
To the celestials, and none will lie down
At Jupiter's feet in time,
To become royal in eternity!
And because the people of Latium
Have begun to go the ungodly way
And no one prays in the sanctuary any more,
Therefore all must fear, all must tremble.
Around their loins coil the serpents
And torment the people with bitter bites.
Who will gain the favour and grace of the gods?
Whom shall Urania kiss from heaven?
How stricken are the consciences of men!
Aeneas lands at the mouth of the Tiber,
He goes ashore with his crew.
O thou of fate's sacred union,
The crew under the captain's command,
You are beckoned by the high hand of the Most High:
You shall prepare a table for him to feast upon!
Aeneas found a good place,
Then they saw him striding to the table of the meal.
The rain clouds fled to the farthest reaches.
With a final thunderclap spoke
The Most High, as Aeneas speaks the word,
Now eat, in remembrance of God! Light
Breaks through the clouds, sanctifies that place,
The place of arrival, gracious port,
There they eat the meat and drink the wine.
Though it were murder in their legs
On their pilgrimage, sunshine wraps them up
At their arrival, golden glory wraps them.
The hunger for grace was so great
That they tore the lamb from the plates.
The hunger was so great that no doubt
They also feed the hostia of wheat.
Wisdom wanted to show the way:
Ye do feed the Host of God?
Then I will gloriously praise your arrival,
Then fate will lead you to Ostia,
The glorious Italy will be yours!
O Wisdom, your gates are suffering,
Yet melancholy consumes my song.
Can Aeneas with the hundred heathen fight,
When I am weary and faint and anxious?
O that I might walk by the river Tiber
And hear its waves murmur softly
And listen to the nightingale's song
And I could listen to the wind of the sky
And exchange my Germany for Italy!
Germany, you landscape under the rain,
Godlessness squats here in a black barrel!
Oh, I don't want to know your ways,
I only want to dream the dream of sweet bliss,
When the moon appears white and the sun golden
And sweet the summer night in Ischia
Surrounds little temples of the Madonna,
The sailor in the night saw the lighthouse
Of the faith that is the faith of Italy.
O let me dream in the Blue Grotto
And let me slumber in the black barges
And stagger through the night like a moth,
Longing for the chirping of cicadas,
Wrap myself in the foam of swans' wings
And bathe near Perugia
In the waters of crystal fountains
And with the fisherwomen here and there
Singing to Our Lady of Ischia!
Saint Peter! Do you still walk at night
With a lantern through Latium
And kiss the earth in the spirit of joy?
Your charisma rests on the sanctuary
Of the Vatican on the Palatium.
O when you pray in the marble halls,
Remember me too, I am your property,
O my patron, shepherd of us all.
I would gladly walk to your grave.
O Father, chariot and carriage of the Church,
Lock me with the key to the kingdom of heaven!
Let me like white blossom of red cherry
Through the summer breezes at night
Towards the sweet south fly,
I will sing the praises of nature
With a seraphic song full of joy.
A pining sighs in all creatures,
Arts and culture yearn for Christ.
Saint Peter, behold, your council describes
The new humanism; O Father, there
I think of Dante, as he lives and lives,
And of Virgil, who saw Christ,
And of Petrarch's epic Africa
And love also Ariost and Tasso very much
And sing Charis and Urania
As all poets' patron Homer.
To this Peter gives his fatherly blessing.
So Aeneas went with a hundred men
And met the prince Latinus in the city.
He could not banish the night visions,
Which he saw in his dream,
The fateless one from Fortuna's wheel,
Aeneas would free his daughter.
The hair was brown, the skin was white and smooth,
The white dress like snow in the May.
It was as if there were ten thousand graces around her.
While the men spoke of the city,
The maiden looked silently at the Trojan.
She smoothed out her robe of linen
And thought to herself silently: I am
For the Trojan surely no profit,
He knows sweet women from Asia
And perhaps he also has a woman in mind.
Cupid, this hunter, this driver,
He may drive this man Aeneas to other bodies.
My breasts are as small as apricots
And not like round swelling shells
And my hips do not tempt men's desires,
Perhaps too chastely my looks have asked.
Men talk of city and state,
I think only hopelessly a tender: You!
At my cradle stood furies
And no graces. Alas, I am bereft of rest
By god Amor! - And Aeneas smiled upon her.
O night! There he sat with Lavinia,
As softly the wind fanned in the arbour.
The summer air of Alexandria
Came with a dove's winged murmur.
Cupid, great thief, rob me of my heart
And give it to the gentle dear woman!
That she is like a wife, that I gladly believe,
I gladly believe, as I look into her eyes:
Like nights dark, deep, and full of the moon's dew.
Then came forth, hunted by the Furies,
The black-haired Turnus, full of rage,
He wants him to feast all alone
On Maid Lavinia, the source of delight,
The cup of joy and the horn of plenty.
So he calls Aeneas to battle,
Then he calls his troop to arms,
Aeneas turns to the camp in a hurry.
To the camp, calls together the scattered troop.
I must avenge the insult of Turnus
With your help I with great fury!
Then the lovely Ascanius
To his father spoke with his unbroken voice:
The bee must first gather many blossoms
Before she can make the honey. So
Down the blue father Tiber swim
And seek at the Palatium
Euander's help for the fight for Latium.
Euander was born of the nymph
Carmenta in fair Greece.
She did not seek the moors and the marshes,
She sought the crystal springs, found
The moisture of pure waters with her hand
And was as pure as the gods made her.
Like a marble statue she stood
In her marble-white body, her hair gilded,
The charms of the gaze from the graces reproduced.
And under a pomegranate tree
In glorious Arcadia
Euander she bears from her womb's foam,
Which was golden as the dear sun,
His eye like the July skies clear
And as sweet roses red his mouth,
Upon it lay the host of Amoretti.
Carmenta clothed him in linen
And loved him and was sore with motherly love.
O golden child with your angel eyes,
Who like thee awakens such sweet rich love?
How gladly I see thee suck at the breasts,
To seek satisfaction of pure urges.
Like a sun thou dost brighten my gloom.
With thy smile sweet and thy laughter.
And I play the bliss of games,
I practise being a child with a child, there
The angels watch over us, slaying old dragons.
And seventy years before the war of Troy
Euander left Arcadia
With his beloved Metanoia
To found his city Palatium.
He named his hill sanctuary
After his native land Pallanteum.
O Roma, I will sing your glory!
Venus in the Vatican Museum
Will coo like the turtledove a te-deum!
In Latium Euander's citadel
Aeneas received in the sun's glow.
Together at the Father Tiber's wave
They both went to the sacrificial grove
And brought to the beloved peace
An innocent and spotless lamb
To the Most High and a cup of wine.
Blessed was Euander's heroic tribe
With Aeneas' noble hundred together.
In the silent grove of sacrifice
To the power of the Holy One,
We will be thunder of his thunder
And wandering lightning of his lightning remain
And be the reflection of his sun's sonship
And be his winds and his messengers.
And the battle approaches, and death draws near,
Then we will unite with our blood
To the Judge, the Lord of the living and the dead.
And now through the Carmental Gate,
Asking for blessings, for the Virgin's blessing,
Sound the Greek chant in the choir
And prayers resound all around,
To move the Virgin's genius,
Carmenta herself was a song
Which all sounds lay at her feet
Like nightingales before the moon.
Out of pure fear of God her song was so long.
And then to the altar of Carmenta,
Euander sacrificed to his mother,
And Aeneas joined them in prayer;
To her they offered honey and butter,
And flowers, flower seeds, birdseed
And a little turtledove's meat
And fresh catch from a fishing boat.
Euander prayed, O mother, pray -
I give thee! desire - and I give chastely!
The pagan now led from the palatine
Aeneas, the one chosen by the gods,
The wilderness around the sacrificial hill
And through overgrown brushwood and thorns.
The two conspirators were allied,
Surrounded by the wings of Amoretti,
By nymphs and goddesses born,
They passed under the golden sun's seal
Through new Rome by the wild Palatine hill.
The booksellers' quarter looked on Aeneas,
As they mocked Virgil, Horace,
Ovid, Catullus, and then laughed
And called antiquated the style of Orpheus
And called Pindar's quill bluntly,
And too passionately called Sappho's ode,
Homer wrote too much poetry
And King David was long out of fashion
And Cygnus was still singing himself to death!
But then, by the she-wolf's grotto
Euander and Aeneas pledged their allegiance
And swore by the most high God:
The alliance of the Palatium renew
In Rome the old Troy that rejoices
She, the patron saint of Ilion,
Before whose beauty all grace shuns,
Who, as Bellona, stands by her son.
The mistress of the armies smiled from the shell throne.
The battle began, the tremendous battle,
Aeneas stood in red blood's stream
As a torch of lightning in the night of war
And Turnus died and entered Hades' dome
As a shadow. And victory was votive aroma
In Venus' beautiful nose (which I saw
And her lips smiling on Rome) -
Lowering her veil on Italy
Madonna gave the fair one to her son as bride.