As the falcon
Resting on the heavy dawn-cloud
With his downy pinions
Seeks his prey,
So my song should hover.
For a god has
Charted out already
For each his own way,
Where who is lucky
Hurries swiftly
To his joyous goal:
But he whose heart
Is shrunken with bad luck
Struggles in vain
Against the bonds
Of that brazen cord
That’s only to be severed
By the bitter shears.
Into the rainswept thicket
The wild beasts plunge,
And with the sparrows
The rich too have sunk
Into the common mire.
Easy it is to follow the wain
Driven by Fortuna,
Like the comfortable crowd
Behind the Prince’s progress.
But who’s that over there?
His path is lost in the thorn-brakes,
Behind him the branches
Rebound together,
The grass stands up again,
The wasteland swallows him.
Ah, who shall heal his torment?
For whom his balm becomes poison,
Who has drunk the hatred of men
Out of the fullness of love?
First scorned, now scorning,
In secret he eats up
His own self-worth
In his insatiate self-quest.
If in your book of psalms,
Father of Love, there is one note
That his ears can hear,
Quench then his heart with it!
Open his cloudy sight
To the thousand springs
That are so close to the thirsty one
In the desert!
You who shape such joys
To each his overflowing portion,
Bless the brotherhood of the hunt
On the track of deadly game
With merry bloodlust,
Avengers, at last, of injuries
For years resisted in vain
By the staves of the countryfolk.
But hide that lonely one
In your cloud of gold!
Till the rose blooms once more,
Shelter with winter evergreens
The rain-soaked hair, O Beloved One,
Of your poet!
With a twilight torch
You light his way
Across the night ford,
Upon unfounded ways,
Across empty fields;
With the thousand-hued dawn
You are laughing into his heart;
With the bitter storm
You bear him into the heights;
Winter torrents plunge from the crags
In his psalms,
And the dreadful summit
Is for him the altar
Of loveliest thanksgiving,
Its crown hung with snow
And wreathed with strings of spirits
By a propitiating people.
Revealed you stand
With unfathomable heart
Mysterious over the marveling world
And gaze from your clouds
On their riches and glory
That from the veins of your brothers beside you You
water with your streams.
1777