In Defense of Society
Pasad, pasad por las puertas,
preparad la calle al pueblo;
allanad el camino,
y alzad el estandarte a los pueblos. (Isaías, LXII, 10.)
Go through, go through the gates;
prepare ye the way of the people;
cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones;
lift up a standard for the people. (Isaiah 62:10)
Creator spirit, fertile genius
you who with inexhaustible activity scatter
miracles from your sublime power,
you who perennially shine
in your good works, you who grasp
regions without end in your thoughts
and you who, with your love, spread from world to world
the laws of eternal movement:
Shall it be that the ultimate reward
offered by your august hand
is condemnation to inaction’s repose?
Would you have us rest
before your show of active power,
to pass our lives–oh Lord!–in indolence,
spent only in admiring you?
No: wake up, all you who from happy fields
and blooming bowers
only seek serenity of spirit,
and hours of peace in unknowing shade.
Rise up, all you who follow
the tides of agreeable fashion;
be anathema to the popular uproar,
let out a shout, break the dreams of the supremely complacent.
It’s not pride–all you who raise up to heaven
an enormous pyramid
and who exalt yourselves, aspiring to infinite flight:
it’s the immortal spark, that most powerful
immense great work;
and in constant travail, internal laboring,
you create, so that man in his delirium will follow
something of greatness, something to last forever.
He stands alone, he who animates
enduring substance from frozen marble,
he who exalts the works of the Creator
in splendid painted landscapes,
who in the burgeoning fire of the Idea
discovers worlds and sees marvels.
Not everything is peace and love, and grateful delight,
there in the fields in companionable silence,
nor in the embrace where innocence dwells:
There’s also the storm letting loose
its destructive fury;
the asp takes shelter in flowers,
and the bird of prey, turbulent,
torments its captive in its claws.
Not everything is vice and confusion and horrors
in the social tumult:
beyond this veil of sin and error
geinus leaves its trace of light, and the Eternal way
of praising the good and lauding virtue.
From God, too, potent majesty
expands in space without measure;
there striving, the thinking soul feels
the seething world and throbs with life.
In solitary calm
the soul alone can’t reach God’s lofty heights;
nor forever could they live in peaceful fields –
“the few wise men who walked this world.”
The society that aims for progress
understands its lofty goals;
and against the idle, vigor stands in opposition,
and achieves its ideals.
Society, she who, active,
refreshes the astonished prophets:
Modern Moses who in the desert brings
floods of living water,
who in the City of the Lord follows the path
and determined heeds
the voices of the menacing crowd;
new Joshua who in the gigantic battle
lingers there in the heavenly sphere –
the way of the father of stars.
For her, in the fight for fame
genius shines its rare miracles
and excites worldly ambitions;
for her, the imperious push to flight;
genius conquers distance;
divides the isthmus;
its wide flights reveal all that’s hidden;
genius discovers the secrets of the abyss,
and catches in its nets how laboring industry
bears astonished the light of the word.
And this is man’s sublime mission:
to put the dense shadows of error to flight,
to bear the light of reason and truth
to ignorance that howls in gloom.
Oh great-souled dreamers
that meditate in perennial quietude and peace,
your motivation is the ghost of fame,
which in idle sterility, would weaken Life!
Come back, that’s not the place
you should be, because suffering humanity
and that same God, opposed to inaction,
command you to fight hour after hour.
Fly to the regions
where in honored battle, Good raises
its glorious banners
and sets forth to conquer the world.
The world lacks light; give it this ray
that you hide in criminal cowardice!
The active laborer lives in pride
in the fields he makes fertile,
showing to evasive idleness
the honored brow that drips with sweat.
The bold miner labors on,
he who picks at the earth
and seizes splendid the precious vein
that gathers in its breast.
Fly to populate the abandoned field,
opening worthy struggles to the future,
you who with science and virtue take
dominion over the peaks of lofty mountains,
who discover new shores,
who broaden unknown horizons
and from the desert to the distant ends of earth
bear the triumphs of human progress.
Yet–ah!–those who retire
from the world’s arena of battle:
you scorn, with disenchantment, the wails
that make the enthusiast’s heart beat fast;
make way for intelligence!
Faint-hearted competitors, get thee gone!
And you, students of science,
who make chaos fertile,
populated by splendid creations,
don’t tremble and flee before your destiny;
raise up the standard of all nations,
open the road to all virtues.
English translation by Liz Henry.
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