第2節
【ゲロンティアスの魂】
私は寝入り、そして元気を回復しました。
奇妙な感じの回復です。
私の中に表現しようのない軽さを感じるのです、
自由になったような感覚、やっと自分自身になったような感覚、こんな感覚は以前に一度もありません。何と静かなのでしょう。もはやせわしない時の刻みも聞こえず、
不規則な呼吸も、もがく鼓動すら聞こえません。
ある瞬間と次の瞬間との差がまったくないのです。
I had a dream; yes: — someone softly said “He’s gone;”
and then a sigh went round the room.
And then I surely heard a priestly voice
Cry “Subvenite;” and they knelt in prayer.
I seem to hear him still; but thin and low,
And fainter and more faint the accents come,
As at an ever-widening interval.
Ah whence is this? What is this severance?
この静寂は私の魂の真髄に
孤独を注ぎます。
そして、深い休息は、気持ちが静まり、心地よいと同時に
厳格さと苦痛を伴っています。
For it drives back my thoughts upon their spring
By a strange introversion, and perforce
I now begin to feed upon myself,
Because I have nought else to feed upon.
Am I alive or dead? I am not dead,
But in the body still; for I possess
A sort of confidence which clings to me,
That each particular organ holds its place
As heretofore, combining with the rest
Into one symmetry that wraps me round,
And makes me man; and surely I could move,
Did I but will it, every part of me.
And yet I cannot to my sense bring home,
By very trial, that I have the power.
‘Tis strange; I cannot stir a hand or foot,
I cannot make my fingers or my lips
By mutual pressure witness each to each,
Nor by the eyelid’s instantaneous stroke
Assure myself I have a body still.
Nor do I know my very attitude,
Nor if I stand, or lie, or sit, or kneel.
So much I know, not knowing how I know,
That the vast universe, where I have dwelt,
Is quitting me, or I am quitting it.
Or I or it is rushing on the wings
Of light or lightning on an onward course,
And we e'en now are million miles apart.
Yet… is this peremptory severance
Wrought out in lengthening measurements of space,
Which grow and multiply by speed and me?
Or am I traversing infinity
By endless subdivision, hurrying back
From finite towards infinitesimal,
Thus dying out of the expansed world?
さらに不思議なことに、私は誰かのしっかりとした
大きな手のひらの中にいるのです。
‘tis not a grasp
Such as they use on earth, but all around
Over the surface of my subtle being,
As though I were a sphere, and capable
To be accosted thus,
均一でゆるやかな圧力によってわかります、
私は自分で動いているのではなく、前方に運ばれているのが。
そして、聞きなさい、甘美な歌声を。
私はその音楽を、聞いているのか、触れているのか、
感じているのか、はっきりしません。
何と気持ちの安らぐ旋律なのでしょう。
【天使】
私の仕事は済みました、
私の務めは終わりました、
それを家に連れ帰るために来ました。
王冠がとこしえに得られたからです。
アレルヤ。
私の父は、この地上の子を
その生誕から私に引き渡しました、
仕えそして救うためにです。そして彼は救われました。
アレルヤ。
この土から生まれた子が
私に与えられました、
悲しみと苦痛で育て
訓練するために、
地から天にかけられている
狭い道の中で。
アレルヤ。
【魂】
あれは、すばらしい人々からなる、あの一族の一人、
世界が作られるよりも前に、
何百万年も昔に、
神の王座の周りに立っていた人々（の一族）。
—he never has known sin;
But through those cycles all but infinite,
Has had a strong and pure celestial life,
And bore to gaze on th’ unveiled face of God
And drank from the eternal Fount of truth,
And served Him with a keen ecstatic love,
Hark! he begins again.
【天使】
O LORD, how wonderful in depth and height,
But most in man, how wonderful Thou art!
With what a love, what soft persuasive might
Victorious o’er the stubborn fleshly heart,
Thy tale complete of saints Thou dost provide,
To fill the thrones which angels lost through pride!
He lay a groveling babe upon the ground,
Polluted in the blood of his first sire,
With his whole essence shattered and unsound,
And, coiled around his heart, a demon dire,
Which was not of his nature, but had skill
To bind and form his opening mind to ill.
Then was I sent from heaven to set right
The balance in his soul of truth and sin,
And I have waged a long relentless fight,
Resolved that death-environed spirit to win,
Which from its fallen state, when all was lost,
Had been repurchased at so dread a cost.
O what a shifting parti-coloured scene
Of hope and fear, of triumph and dismay,
Of recklessness and penitence, has been
The history of that dreary, lifelong fray!
And 0 the grace to nerve him and to lead,
How patient, prompt, and lavish at his need!
O man, strange composite of heaven and earth!
Majesty dwarfed to baseness! Fragrant flower
Running to poisonous seed! and seeming worth
Cloking corruption! weakness mastering power!
Who never art so near to crime and shame,
As when thou hast achieved some deed of name.
How should ethereal natures comprehend
A thing made up of spirit and of clay,
Were we not tasked to nurse it and to tend,
Linked one to one throughout its mortal day?
More than the Seraph in his height of place,
The Angel-guardian knows and loves the ransomed race.
【魂】
NOW know I surely that I am at length
Out of the body: had I part with earth,
I never could have drunk those accents in,
And not have worshipped as a god the voice
That was so musical; but now I am
So whole of heart, so calm, so self-possessed,
With such a full content, and with a sense
So apprehensive and discriminant,
As no temptation can intoxicate.
Nor have I ever terror at the thought
That I am clasped by such a saintliness.
【天使】
ALL praise to Him, at whose sublime decree
The last are first, the first become the last;
By whom the suppliant prisoner is set free,
By whom proud first-borns from their thrones are cast;
Who raises Mary to be Queen of heaven,
While Lucifer is left, condemned and unforgiven.
