هيباتيا (قصائد عتيقة)
هيباتيا
1886
- A t the decline of the grandeurs that dominate the earth,
- When the divine cults, under the bent centuries
- , Retaking the solitary path from oblivion,
- Watch their shattered altars crumble;
When from the oak of Hellas the wandering leaf Of deserted courts effaces the path, And beyond the seas, where thick shade abounds, Towards a young sun floats the human spirit;
Always vanquished Gods embracing fortune, A great heart defends them from insulting fate: The dawn of new days hurts and troubles him, He follows the star of his ancestors on the horizon.
For a better destiny another century is born And from an exhausted world goes away without remorse: Faithful to the happy dream in which his youth blooms, He hears the dust of the dead quivering.
The Sages, the heroes rise full of life! The poets in chorus murmur their beautiful names; And the ideal Olympus, which a sacred song invites On the ivory sits in the white Parthenons.
O virgin, who, with a flap of your pious robe, Covered the august tomb where your Gods slept, From their worship eclipsed harmonious priestess, Chaste and last ray detached from their heavens!
I love you and salute you, O magnanimous virgin! When the storm shook the paternal world, You followed in exile this sublime Oedipus. And you enveloped him in eternal love.
Standing, in your pallor, under the sacred porticoes That ungrateful peoples abandoned the swarm, Pythoness chained to prophetic tripods, The betrayed Immortals throbbed in your bosom.
You saw them pass through the flaming cloud! They still showered you with science and love; And the earth listened, from your charmed dream, To sing the Attic bee between your golden lips.
Like a young lotos growing under the eye of the wise, Flower of their eloquence and their equity, You made, on the less dark night of old ages, Your genius shine through your beauty!
The grave teaching of the eternal virtues Flowed from your lips to the depths of charmed hearts; And the Galileans who dreamed of your wings Forgot their dead God for your beloved Gods.
But the century took away those rebellious souls That a too fragile bond chained to your steps; And you saw them flee to the promised land; But you, who knew everything, you did not follow them!
What did such a delirium matter to you, O virgin? Did you not possess this sought-after ideal? Goes ! in these troubled hearts your eyes knew how to read, And the benevolent Gods had hidden nothing from you.
O wise child, so pure among your mortal sisters! O noble brow, spotless between sacred brows! What soul had sung on fairer lips, And burned more limpid in inspired eyes?
Without ever touching your immaculate dress, The defilements of the century have respected your hands: You walked, your eyes turned towards the starry Life, Ignorant of human evils and crimes.
The vile Galilean struck you and cursed you, But you fell taller! And now, alas! Plato's breath and Aphrodite's body Are gone forever for the fair skies of Hellas!
Sleep, O white victim, in our deep soul,
In your virgin's shroud and surrounded by lotos;
Sleep! impure ugliness is the queen of the world,
And we have lost the way to Paros.
The Gods are in dust and the earth is mute: Nothing will speak any more in your deserted sky. Sleep! but, alive in him, sings to the heart of the poet The melodious hymn of holy Beauty!
She alone survives, immutable, eternal. Death can disperse trembling universes, But Beauty blazes, and everything is reborn in her, And the worlds still roll under her white feet!