Friedrich Hoelderlin

Hyperion Friedrich Hoelderlin

I looked, and might have expired before the all-powerful sight. Like an immense shipwreck when the hurricanes have fallen silent and the sailors have fled and the corpse of the shattered fleet lies unrecognizable on the sandbank, thus lay Athens before us, and the abandoned pillars stood before us like the naked trunks of a forest that had still been green in the evening and in the night had gone up in flames.