AN INNER LIFE
If you possess an inner-life
Guard carefully this treasure,
Or life will sear into your soul
Eternal grief’s full measure.
When you step out into the world
You are a stranger there,
The finer blossoms of your soul,
Yes, the soul itself grows bare.
Only within your inner self
You grasp the world’s full scope,
Therein reside unfettered thoughts,
Therefrom spring deeds and hope.
Only within your inner self
Can great ambitions breathe,
And the sparkling diamonds of your hope
Are woven in glory’s wreath.
Your inner-life is the only life
Where you are free to reign,
Beyond its scope you trample on
Your neighbor’s fixed domain.
When beaten here and beaten there
You grow weary with the strife;
You are alone as a drifting spar
On the stormy sea of life.
Your inner-life holds blissful peace,
No quarrels threaten there,
You rise within onto a mount,
A giant, proud and fair.
People will come, bow down to you
And honor your command,
With silver words of praise they ring
Your fame throughout the land.
The outer world is brightly garbed,
With a siren’s call it spurs;
Many a man has answered it,
But never a man returns.
Who venture forth, brave angry storms,
And when exhausted sleep,
While the inner emptiness yields space
To emotions, stirred and deep.
Learn well the art of inner life
To know the joys of song.
And having learned this, man decide
To sing through right or wrong.
Live always in your inner-life
And open not its door,
Because for joys of life you give
A part of you and more.
In strife I spent my inner-life,
Now its songs I oft repeat.
On wings of song sped life itself . . .
My heart, why do you beat?
I finish now my plaintive song
And lay aside the Lyre,
I have lost my faith in its very strings,
In myself and my desire.
The strings send forth an anguished strain
Of beauty’s withered flowers,
Of squandered youth, of wasted days,
Of buried, ill-spent hours.
The strings have snapped and loosely hang
Like a widow’s grief-torn hair,
But still they ring so madly sweet
Like Aeol’s harp, in air.
This work is a translation and has a separate copyright status to the applicable copyright protections of the original content.
| Original: |
This work was published before January 1, 1929, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
|---|---|
| Translation: |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was legally published within the United States (or the United Nations Headquarters in New York subject to Section 7 of the United States Headquarters Agreement) between 1929 and 1977 (inclusive) without a copyright notice. The longest-living author of this work died in 1987, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 36 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
Public domainPublic domainfalsefalse |
