How heavy the days are.
There’s not a fire that can warm me,
Not a sun to laugh with me,
Everything bare,
Everything cold and merciless.
And even the beloved, clear
Stars look desolately down,
Since I learned in my heart that
Love can die.
Friend of my young manhood, on many an evening
I return gratefully to you, when in the elder bushes
Of the garden fallen asleep
Only the rustling fountains still make a sound.
Nobody knows you, my friend; this new age has driven
Far away from the silent magic of Greece.
Without prayer, and cheated out of gods,
People stroll reasonably in the dust.
But to the secret gathering who sink in their inner lives,
Whose souls God has stricken with longing,
The heavenly strings of your songs
Are ringing, even today.
We turn passionately, exhausted by day,
To the ambrosia, the night of your music,
Whose fanning wing casts us into
A shadow of golden dream.
Yes, and luminously, when your song delights us,
Sorrowfully burning for the blessed land of the past,
For the temples of the Greeks,
Our homesickness lasts forever.