We present this work in honor of the poet’s 250th birthday.

 

So she wanders in the eternally same circle,
The time, in its old way,
Deaf and blind on their way.
The impartial human child
Always expecting from the next moment
An unexpected strange new happiness.
The sun goes and returns
Comes the moon and the night falls,
The hours guide the weeks down
The weeks bring the seasons.
From the outside nothing ever again.

O the delightful moment! Precious reward of my toils!
Hell rejoices at thy curses, and expects a yet more frightful one from thee.
Fool! wast thou not born free?
Didst thou not bear in thy breast, like all who live in flesh,
the instinct of good as well as of evil?
Why didst thou transgress, with so much temerity,
the bounds which had been prescribed to thee?
Why didst thou endeavour to try thy strength with and against
Him who is not to be reached?
Did not God create you in such a manner,
that you were as much elevated above the devils
as above the beasts of the earth?
Did he not grant you the perceptive faculty of good and evil?
Were not your will and choice free?
We wretches are without choice, without will;
we are the slaves of evil and of imperious necessity;
constrained and condemned to all eternity to wish nothing but evil,
we are the instruments of revenge and punishment upon you.
Ye are kings of the creation, free beings,
masters of your destiny, which ye fix yourselves;
masters of the future, which only depends upon your actions.
It is on account of these prerogatives that we detest you,
and rejoice when, by your follies, your impatience, and your crimes,
you cease to be masters of yourselves.
It is only in resignation, Faustus, that present or future happiness consists.
Hadst thou remained what thou wast,
and had not doubt, pride, vanity, and voluptuousness
torn thee out of the happy and limited sphere for which thou wast born,
thou mightst have followed an honourable employment,
and have supported thy wife and children; and thy family,
which is now sunk into the refuse of humanity,
would have been blooming and prosperous;
lamented by them, thou wouldst have died calmly on thy bed,
and thy example would have guided thy posterity along the thorny path of life.

Translation by George Borrow

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 125th birthday.

 

When the Regime ordered that books with dangerous teachings
Should be publicly burnt and everywhere
Oxen were forced to draw carts full of books
To the funeral pyre, an exiled poet,
One of the best, discovered with fury, when he studied the list
Of the burned, that his books
Had been forgotten. He rushed to his writing table
On wings of anger and wrote a letter to those in power,
Burn me, he wrote with hurrying pen, burn me!
Do not treat me in this fashion. Don’t leave me out. Have I not
Always spoken the truth in my books? And now
You treat me like a liar! I order you:
Burn me!

Translation by H.R. Hays

We present this work in honor of the 210th anniversary of the poet’s death.

 

Now through the outward court swift speeds the knight ;
Within the second from his steed descends;
Along the third his pace majestic bends:
Where’er he enters, dazzled by his sight,
The guards make way, — his gait, his dress, his air,
A nuptial guest of highest rank declare.
Now he advances towards an ebon gate,
Where with drawn swords twelve Moors gigantic wait,
And piecemeal hack the wretch who steps unbidden there.
But the bold gesture and imperial mien Of Huon,
as he opes the lofty door, Drive back the swords that crossed his path before,
And at his entrance flamed with lightning sheen.
At once, with rushing noise, the valves unfold:
High throbs the bosom of our hero bold,
When, locked behind him, harsh the portals bray :
Through gardens decked with columns leads the way,
Where towered a gate incased with plates of massy gold.
There a large forecourt held a various race
Of slaves, a hapless race, sad harem slaves,
Who die of thirst ‘mid joy ‘s o’erflowing waves !
And when a man, whom emir honors grace,
Swells in his state before their hollow eye,
Breathless they bend, with looks that seem to die,
Beneath the weight of servitude oppressed ;
Bow down, with folded arms across the breast,
Nor dare look up to mark the pomp that glitters by.

Translation by Robyn Lowrie

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 425th birthday.

 

Ah, sweetheart, let us hurry
We still have time.
Delaying thus, we bury
Our mutual prime.

Beauty’s bright gift shall perish
As leaves grow sere;
All that we have and cherish
Shall disappear.

The cheek of roses fadeth
Gray grows the head;
And fire the eyes evadeth
And passion’s dead.

The mouth, love’s honeyed winner
Is formless, cold;
The hand, like snow, gets thinner
And thou art old!

So let us taste the pleasure
That youth endears,
Ere we are called to measure
The flying years.

Give, as thou lov’st and livest
Thy love to me,
Even though, in what thou givest
My loss should be!

Translation by Bayard Taylor

We present this work in honor of the poet’s 230th birthday.

 

A single fir-tree, lonely,
On a northern mountain height,
Sleeps in a white blanket,
Draped in snow and ice.

His dreams are of a palm-tree,
Who, far in eastern lands,
Weeps, all alone and silent,
Among the burning sands.

Translation by A.S. Kline