Some Lines from Voltaire's Poem on the Disaster at Lisbon, By François Marie Arouet de Voltaire
1. Will You Say This?
Will you say, "It is the effect of everlasting laws
2. We Are Not Oaks
If the eternal law which moves elemental things
3. God Is Asked About
What eye may see into his deep designs?
4. Why Cannot This Be?
Whatever opinion one has, one should shudder, no doubt.
What can then do, the mind of largest range?
A caliph once, at his last hour,
What is needed, O mortals? Mortals, it is needed that we suffer,
8. This Is in a Note
O God, give us a Revelation that we should be humane and
|From THE POEMS LOOKED AT: or, NOTES|
Some Lines from Voltaire's Poem on the Disaster at Lisbon. 1967. Voltaire and Simonides are so different in the poem we are now considering and in the poem before. Simonides sees something so right in Thermopylae: what happened there in 480 B.C. Such historical composure Simonides has; such acceptance of the universe as occurrence. But Voltaire argues. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is not something to be resigned to, unquestioning about, says one of the most alert men of all history. Voltaire, though, is poetic too. He doesn't have the brief, undying grandeur of Simonides, but in the lines on Lisbon, Voltaire shows he is poetic Voltaire. Grace, music, largeness, surprise, wit—and, again, auditory loveliness are in the Lisbon lines. Voltaire and Simonides have both complied with the Muses' pleasing monitions.
From Hail, American Development (Definition Press)
© 1968 by Eli Siegel
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