You walk above in the light,
Soulful genius, on a yielding floor!
God’s shining breezes
Gently touch you
As the fingers of a musician
On otherworldly strings.
Fearless, like a nursing infant asleep,
The gods draw breath;
Chastely perserved
In modest buds,
Their minds are always
In flower,
And their soulful eyes
Gaze calmly and eternally
In silent clarity.
But it’s our fate
To have no place to rest,
As suffering mortals
Blindly fall and vanish
From one hour
To the next,
Like water falling
From cliff to cliff, downward
For years to uncertainty.
Friedrich Hölderlin