The Titans

by Friedrich Holderlin

It's not yet

Time. They are still

Unbound. And the indifferent don't care

About godly matters.

Let them puzzle it out

With the Oracle. Meanwhile, during the festivities,

I'll take my ease thinking of the dead.

In the old days, many generals died

and lovely women and poets.

Today, it's many men.

But I am alone.

and sailing on the ocean

The sweetly scented islands

Ask where they are.

For something of them remains

In writing and in myth.

God reveals so much.

For a long time the clouds

Have influenced what's below

And the holy forest, fertile as a god,

Has sent down roots.

The world's riches burn too intensely.

For we don't have the song

That will shake our spirit free.

It would consume itself,

For the heavenly fire can never

Endure captivity.

Yet men enjoy

The banquet, and in celebration,

Their eyes are brightened by pearls

On a young woman's neck.

Also games of war

and through

The garden paths

The memory of battle clatters;

The resonant weapons

Of heroic ancestors lie soothed

And still upon the breasts

Of children. But the bees hum

Around me, and where the plowman

Makes his furrows, birds

Sing against the light. Many give

Help to heaven. The poet

Sees them. It's good to rely

On others. For no one can bear his life alone.

For when the busy day

Catches fire,

And heavenly dew glistens

On the chain

Leading lightning from sunrise

To its source, even mortals

Feel its grandeur.

That's why they build houses

And the workshop is so busy

And ships sail against the currents

And men exchange greetings

Holding out their hands; it's sensible

On earth, and not for nothing

Do we fix our eyes on the ground.

Yet you sense

A different way.

For proportion demands

That coarseness exist

For purity to be known.

But when the first cause

Reaches into the earth

To make it come to life,

People think the heavenly

Have come down to the dead

And the all-knowing has dawned

In a boundless emptiness.

It's not for me to say

That the gods are growing weak

Just as they come into being.

But when

and it goes

As far as the part in father's hair, so that

and the bird of heaven

Makes it known to him. Wonderful

in anger, that's what matters.