When Hölderlin started from Bordeaux
He was not mad but lost in mind,
For time and space had fled away
With her he had to find.
“The morning bells rang over France
From tower to tower. At noon I came
Into a maze of little hills,
Head-high and every hill the same.”
“A little world of emerald hills,
And at their heart a faint bell tolled;
Wedding or burial, who could say?
For death, unseen, is bold.”
“Too small to climb, too tall to show
More than themselves, the hills lay round.
Nearer to her, or farther? They
Might have stretched to the world’s bound.”
“A shallow candour was their all,
And the mean riddle, How to tally
Reality with such appearance,
When in the nearest valley”
“Perhaps already she I sought,
She, sought and seeker, had gone by,
And each of us in turn was trapped
By simple treachery.”
“The evening brought a field, a wood.
I left behind the hills of lies,
And watched beside a mouldering gate
A deer with its rock-crystal eyes.”
“On either pillar of the gate
A deer’s head watched within the stone.
The living deer with quiet look
Seemed to be gazing on”
“Its pictured death—and suddenly
I knew, Diotima was dead,
As if a single thought had sprung
From the cold and the living head.”
“That image held me and I saw
All moving things so still and sad,
But till I came into the mountains
I know I was not mad.”
“What made the change? The hills and towers
Stood otherwise than they should stand,
And without fear the lawless roads
Ran wrong through all the land.”
“Upon the swarming towns of iron
The bells hailed down their iron peals,
Above the iron bells the swallows
Glided on iron wheels.”
“And there I watched in one confounded
The living and the unliving head.
Why should it be? For now I know
Diotima was dead”
“Before I left the starting place;
Empty the course, the garland gone,
And all that race as motionless
As these two heads of stone.”
So Hölderlin mused for thirty years
On a green hill by Tübingen,
Dragging in pain a broken mind
And giving thanks to God and men.