Where is the cavernous home of the stars,
When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,--
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains?
When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,--
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains?
Thoreau - Excursions and Poems
"
The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly being who has reached the
last stage of bodily existence.
Great restorer of antiquity, great enchanter! In a mild night when the
harvest or hunter's moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our
village, whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only
a master. The village street is then as wild as the forest. New and
old things are confounded. I know not whether I am sitting on the
ruins of a wall, or on the material which is to compose a new one.
Nature is an instructed and impartial teacher, spreading no crude
opinions, and flattering none; she will be neither radical nor
conservative. Consider the moonlight, so civil, yet so savage!
The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day. It
is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual
atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated
moments are.
"In such a night let me abroad remain
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again. "
Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of
an inward dawn? --to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if
the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and
glaring.
When Ossian, in his address to the sun, exclaims,--
"Where has darkness its dwelling?
Where is the cavernous home of the stars,
When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,--
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains? "
who does not in his thought accompany the stars to their "cavernous
home," "descending" with them "on barren mountains"?
Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see
through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day,
where the sunbeams are reveling.
TRANSLATIONS
THE PROMETHEUS BOUND OF AESCHYLUS
PERSONS OF THE DRAMA
KRATOS _and_ BIA (Strength and Force).
HEPHAISTUS (Vulcan).
PROMETHEUS.
CHORUS OF OCEAN NYMPHS.
OCEANUS.
IO, _Daughter of Inachus_.
HERMES.
KRATOS _and_ BIA, HEPHAISTUS, PROMETHEUS.
_Kr. _ We are come to the far-bounding plain of earth,
To the Scythian way, to the unapproached solitude.
Hephaistus, orders must have thy attention,
Which the Father has enjoined on thee, this bold one
To the high-hanging rocks to bind
In indissoluble fetters of adamantine bonds.
For thy flower, the splendor of fire useful in all arts,
Stealing, he bestowed on mortals; and for such
A crime 't is fit he should give satisfaction to the gods;
That he may learn the tyranny of Zeus
To love, and cease from his man-loving ways.
_Heph.
The Hindoos compare the moon to a saintly being who has reached the
last stage of bodily existence.
Great restorer of antiquity, great enchanter! In a mild night when the
harvest or hunter's moon shines unobstructedly, the houses in our
village, whatever architect they may have had by day, acknowledge only
a master. The village street is then as wild as the forest. New and
old things are confounded. I know not whether I am sitting on the
ruins of a wall, or on the material which is to compose a new one.
Nature is an instructed and impartial teacher, spreading no crude
opinions, and flattering none; she will be neither radical nor
conservative. Consider the moonlight, so civil, yet so savage!
The light is more proportionate to our knowledge than that of day. It
is no more dusky in ordinary nights than our mind's habitual
atmosphere, and the moonlight is as bright as our most illuminated
moments are.
"In such a night let me abroad remain
Till morning breaks, and all's confused again. "
Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of
an inward dawn? --to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if
the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and
glaring.
When Ossian, in his address to the sun, exclaims,--
"Where has darkness its dwelling?
Where is the cavernous home of the stars,
When thou quickly followest their steps,
Pursuing them like a hunter in the sky,--
Thou climbing the lofty hills,
They descending on barren mountains? "
who does not in his thought accompany the stars to their "cavernous
home," "descending" with them "on barren mountains"?
Nevertheless, even by night the sky is blue and not black, for we see
through the shadow of the earth into the distant atmosphere of day,
where the sunbeams are reveling.
TRANSLATIONS
THE PROMETHEUS BOUND OF AESCHYLUS
PERSONS OF THE DRAMA
KRATOS _and_ BIA (Strength and Force).
HEPHAISTUS (Vulcan).
PROMETHEUS.
CHORUS OF OCEAN NYMPHS.
OCEANUS.
IO, _Daughter of Inachus_.
HERMES.
KRATOS _and_ BIA, HEPHAISTUS, PROMETHEUS.
_Kr. _ We are come to the far-bounding plain of earth,
To the Scythian way, to the unapproached solitude.
Hephaistus, orders must have thy attention,
Which the Father has enjoined on thee, this bold one
To the high-hanging rocks to bind
In indissoluble fetters of adamantine bonds.
For thy flower, the splendor of fire useful in all arts,
Stealing, he bestowed on mortals; and for such
A crime 't is fit he should give satisfaction to the gods;
That he may learn the tyranny of Zeus
To love, and cease from his man-loving ways.
_Heph.
