The Prayer of Socrates

Poem by Gérard De Nerval Period 19th century

O Thou whose power fills immensity,
Supreme ordainer of those celestial spheres
Whose relations I once, in my temerity,
Wished to calculate and sound their mysteries;
Consoling Spirit, receive from heaven above
The one and pure homage
Of one of the admirers of thy sublime work,
Who burns to return to thy paternal breast!

An entire people, guided by an infamous priest,
Accuses of being atheist and rebel to the faith
The ardent philosopher who alone knows thy law,
And soon would cease to be so,
If he doubted thee for a moment.

Ah! how, seeing the order in which all things move,
Could I, admiring these diverse prodigies,
This eternal torch, these worlds and these seas,
Admit the effect, and reject the cause?

Yes, great God, I owe thee the good I have tasted,
And the good I hope for;
In calling me thy son I have too much delight
To deny my father.

But what art thou then, mysterious being?
Who will ever dare to penetrate thy essence,
To tear the veil that hides thee from our eyes,
And show in the full light thy glory and thy power?

Ceaselessly in the vague we wander seeking thee,
How the credulous man has debased thy being!
Too low to judge thee, he listens to the priest,
Who makes thee, like himself, vile, blind and wicked.
The sacred impostors who live by thy worship,
Ceaselessly lavish on thee both outrage and insult;
They make of thy empire an eternal hell,
Portray thee governing with thy sovereign hands
A stupid rabble of human machines,
With a rod of iron.

To see thee closer he vainly seeks to aspire;
The sage raves when he believes he understands thee,
And, creating thee after himself alone,
In vain on a base he raises thee, he lifts thee;
But thy perfect being is only an astonishing man,
And his Jupiter a colossus.

Burning to know thee, O divine Creator!
I often analyzed the cults of the earth,
And I saw everywhere only lies and chimera;
Then, abandoning both the world and error,
And seeking, to see thee, a purer source,
I asked thy name of all nature
And I found thy worship in consulting my heart.

Ah! thy goodness, no doubt, approved my homage,
Since in thee I have tasted the purest pleasure;
Since in thee, to expire, I draw my courage
In the hope of future happiness!
Awakened from life, in thee I shall be reborn.
To all my enemies I forgive their wrongs,
And, since I believe myself worthy to know thee,
I descend into thy breast, without trouble and without remorse.

Gérard de Nerval

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-prayer-of-socrates-gerard-de-nerval/