El archipiélago Quotes

“Still you think yourself lonely; in the silence of night
Your lament is heard by the stone, and flees from you often
To wail away from mortals on a wingéd wave to heaven.
Because the precious favorites never lived with you,
Who worshiped you, who once made stunning temples and cities
To wreathe your shores, and always searched and always missed,
For the wreath will always need its heroes, the consecrated ones
Glorified to eminence in the hearts of sensitive men.

Tell me, then, where is Athens? Above the urns of the masters
Is the most beloved of your cities, on the sacred shores,
In mourning for God, and collapsed completely into ashes,
Or is there still an indication from her that the skipper,
When he arrives, perhaps he will remember her and call?
In the columns that rose upward there, did nothing shine
Below but the figurines of God on castle rooftops?
Didn't people's voices, vociferous and wild, rustle
Through the agora, and rush away through the gateways of joy
Along the narrow lanes and down to the holiest of harbors?
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Alas! It wanders in the night, it dwells as in Orcus,
With nothing godlike, our race. To their own bustle
Alone they are fastened, and in the raging workshop
Each hears only himself, and the wild ones with mighty arms
Work much without respite; yet ever more
Sterile, like the Furies, remains the toil of the poor.”
― Friedrich Hölderlin, El archipiélago