Nathan the Wise; a dramatic poem in five acts

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Готхольд Эфраим Лессинг

Год написания книги

2019

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And you are here, your very self, my father,
I thought you’d only sent your voice before you.
Where are you then? What mountains, deserts, torrents,
Divide us now? You see me, face to face,
And do not hasten to embrace your Recha.
Poor Recha! she was almost burnt alive,
But only—only—almost. Do not shudder!
O ’tis a horrid end to die in fire!

NATHAN (embracing her)

My child, my darling child!

RECHA

You had to cross
The Jordan, Tigris, and Euphrates, and
Who knows what rivers else. I used to tremble
And quake for you, till the fire came so nigh me;
Since then, methinks ’twere comfort, balm, refreshment,
To die by water. But you are not drowned—
I am not burnt alive.—We will rejoice—
We will praise God—the kind good God, who bore thee,
Upon the buoyant wings of unseen angels,
Across the treacherous stream—the God who bade
My angel visibly on his white wing
Athwart the roaring flame—

NATHAN (aside)

White wing?—oh, aye
The broad white fluttering mantle of the templar.

RECHA

Yes, visibly he bore me through the fire,
O’ershadowed by his pinions.—Face to face
I’ve seen an angel, father, my own angel.

NATHAN

Recha deserves it, and would see in him
No fairer form than he beheld in her,

RECHA

Whom are you flattering, father—tell me now—
The angel, or yourself?

NATHAN

Yet had a man,
A man of those whom Nature daily fashions,
Done you this service, he to you had seemed,
Had been an angel.

RECHA

No, not such a one.
Indeed it was a true and real angel.
And have not you yourself instructed me
How possible it is there may be angels;
That God for those who love him can work miracles—
And I do love him, father—

NATHAN

And he thee;
And both for thee, and all like thee, my child,
Works daily wonders, from eternity
Has wrought them for you.

RECHA

That I like to hear.

NATHAN

Well, and although it sounds quite natural,
An every day event, a simple story,
That you was by a real templar saved,
Is it the less a miracle? The greatest
Of all is this, that true and real wonders
Should happen so perpetually, so daily.
Without this universal miracle
A thinking man had scarcely called those such,
Which only children, Recha, ought to name so,
Who love to gape and stare at the unusual
And hunt for novelty—

DAYA

Why will you then
With such vain subtleties, confuse her brain
Already overheated?

NATHAN

Let me manage.—