You have lost faith in anything great; you are doomed, then, doomed to perish unless that faith returns, like a comet from unknown skies. - Friedrich Hölderlin

O sacred light, walking there upon us, restlessly potent in its tremendous realm, disclosing its soul to me as well, in the rays that I drink, your luck be mine! From their deeds the sons of the sun nourish themselves; they live by victory; with own spirit they rouse themselves, and their force is their mirth.

The God, when he draws near, will the heart stand fast.
But, oh my, shame! when of

My shame!

And let me say at once

That I approached to see the Heavenly,
And they cast me down, deep down
Below the living, into the dark cast down
The false priest that I am, to sing,
For those who have ears to hear, the warning song.
There

Too long now things divine have been cheaply used
And all the power of heaven, the kindly, spent
In trifling waste by cold and cunning
Men without thanks, who when he, the Highest,

In person tills their field for them, think they know
the daylight and the Thunderer, and indeed
Their telescope may find them all, may
Count and may name every star of heaven.

Yet will the Father cover with holy night,
That we may last on earth, our too knowing eyes.
. . . Never will our
Free-ranging power coerce his heaven.

From “The Poet’s Vocation” (“Dichterberuf”)