BETTER ANGELS

Jeder Engel ist schrecklich. Und dennoch, weh mir, / ansing ich euch, fast tödliche Vögel der Seele, / wissend um euch.

—from "Die Zweite Elegie," Duineser Elegie, 1912-1922, by Rainer Maria Rilke

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Every Angel is terrible. Still though, alas! / I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul, / knowing about you.

—from "The Second Elegy," Duino Elegies, 1939, translation by J. B. Leishman and Stephen Spender

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Every angel’s terrifying. Almost deadly birds / of my soul, I know what you are, but, oh / I still sing to you!

—from "The Second Elegy," Duino Elegies, 1977, translation by A. Poulin, Jr.

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Every angel terrifies. Still, though I know / how almost-deadly you are, you birds of the soul, / I call out to you.

—from "The Second Elegy," Duino Elegies, 1981, translation by Gary Miranda

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Every angel is terrifying. And yet, alas, / I invoke you, almost deadly birds of the soul, / knowing about you.

—from "The Second Elegy," Duino Elegies, 1982, translation by Stephen Mitchell

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Scarcely had I turned from my window, heavy of heart as only a near and certain joy makes us, when I felt an alien presence in the room. It was nothing more than a stirring of the air, so that the words which formed themselves on my lips were like the creases suddenly thrown off a limp sail before a fresh breeze.

—from "A Christmas Angel," Berlin Childhood circa 1900, 1932, by Walter Benjamin, translation by Carl Skoggard (2010)

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I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

—from "First Inaugural Address," 1861, by President Abraham Lincoln