"I. DAWN
"Awake, dark phantoms! smile to heaven, majestically, for a ray in the Infinite rises and strikes your brow. One by one the folds of your great mantle are unrolled, and the first gleams, caressing the proud furrows [on your brow], spread over them an instant of sweetness and serenity.
"Awake, mountains! The king of space appears!
"Awake, valley! who concealest the happy nests and sleeping cottages; awake, singing. And if, in thy chant, sighs also reach me, may the light wind of the morning hours gather them and bear them to God.
"Awake, cities! to which the pure rays penetrate regretfully! Sciences, turmoils, human degradations, awake!... Up, artificial worlds!
"The shadows melt away little by little, before the invading light....
"Laugh or weep, creatures who people this world.
"Awake, harmonies! God hearkens!
"II. DAY (Afternoon, under the pines)
"How sweet it is to cling to the mountain-sides, broad staircase of heaven!
"How sweet it is to dream, far from the turmoil of man, in the smiling majesty of the mountain-tops!
"Let us mount towards the summits; man deserts them, and there, where man is no longer, God makes His great voice heard; let us view His ephemeral creatures from afar, in order that we may be able to serve and love them.
"Here, all earthly sounds mount in harmony towards my rested heart; here, all becomes hymn and prayer; Life and Death hold each other by the hand, to cry towards heaven: Providence and Goodness. I no longer see what perishes, but what is born again on the ruins; the great Guide seems to reign there alone.
"All grows still. Crossing the sun-lit plain, a sweet, innocent song reaches me, borne by the wind, which glides through the depths of the woods.
"Oh, wrap me wholly in thy sublime accents, wind, whose wild breath gives life to the organ of Creation! Gather the birds' songs on the dark pines; bring to me the rustic sounds, the joyous laughs of the maidens of the valley, the murmur of the waves, and the breath of plants. Hide in thy great sob all the sobs of the earth; let only the purest harmonies reach me, works of the divine Good!
"III. EVENING
"Night steals across the all-covering sky, and the waning light sends forth a fresh breath swiftly over the weary world. The flowers stir, their heads seek one another, to prop themselves one against another and sleep. A last ray caresses the mountain-tops, whilst, happy after his rude day's work, the mountaineer seeks his rustic abode, whose smoke rises from a fold of the vale.
"The sound of bells, sign of life, ceases little by little; the lambs crowd into the fold, and before the crackling fire the peasant woman rocks to sleep her child whose timid soul is dreaming of mists, the daring wolf, and the black verge of the woods.
"Soon all things sleep beneath the shadows, all appears ghostly in the valley; yet all still lives.
"O Night! Eternal Harmony dwells beneath thy veil; joy and grief are but sleeping.
"O Night! consuming Life stirs through the all-consuming day; Life creates itself anew beneath the pearl-strewn mantle of thy outstretched arms...."
In all three movements of d'Indy's tripartite tone-poem a piano is included among the orchestral forces; yet it is never used as a solo instrument, nor even as an orchestral voice (save for a few measures in the third movement), but is employed solely for purposes of instrumental embroidery.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Translated by Mr. Philip Hale.
[68] Paraphrased by Mr. Philip Hale.
[69] It has been said that the concluding passage of this version (in Mr. Apthorp's prose translation the last four lines) is not in the original Babylonian poem, but is an arbitrary addition by the French translator. Moreover, the French version is credited to the Gilgamesh epic (the Assyrio-Babylonian epic of which Izdubar, or Gilgamesh, is the hero), with which, it has been pointed out, the story of Istar's descent into Hades has nothing to do. Istar (or Ishtar) was the chief deity of the Babylonians and Assyrians. At first a merely local deity, she ultimately came to be regarded as the personification of fertility (both of the soil and of human and animal life) and of war. She corresponded in general to the Ashtoreth (Astarte) of the Syrio-Canaanites, save that she was conceived as ruling the planet Venus, rather than the moon, over which Ashtoreth held sway. Being the representative of the principle of fertility, Istar was regarded also as the goddess of sexual love.
LISZT
(Franz Liszt: born in Raiding, near Ödenburg, Hungary, October 22, 1811; died in Bayreuth, July 31, 1886)