Here’s a pair of poems from Friedrich Hölderlin, a German poet and Hellenic pagan of the 18th and 19th centuries.
They sparked a good think in me today.
~ To the Fates ~
Give me just one summer, stark sisters,
One more autumn to ripen my song.
Then I’ll gladly die, my heart filled
With that sweet music.
The soul, which never had its godly rights
In life, won’t find peace in Orkus either.
When just once the sacred lies
In my heart, the poem is perfected.
Then I will welcome the world
Of silence and shadows and happily leave
My song behind; once I lived
Like the gods, no more is required.
~ Socrates and Alcibiades ~
“Why, holy Socrates, do you constantly
Embrace this man? Don’t you have greater concerns?
Why do you gaze on him
With such love, as on a god?”
He who thinks deepest loves the liveliest things.
He who truly sees has the wisdom
To rely on the majesty of youth,
And in the end bows to the beautiful.
Wandering Ways 