DOWN WHERE THE LONELY POPLARS GROW  Translated by Corneliu M. Popescu Down where the lonely poplars grow  How often have I erred;  My steps that all the neighbours know  You only have not heard.  Towards your window lighted through  How oft my gaze has flown;  A world entire my secret knew  You only have not known.  A word, a murmur of reply  How often did I pray!  What matters then if I should die,  Enough to live that day;  To know one hour of tenderness,  One hour of lover's night;  To hear your whisper's soft caress  One hour, then come what might!  Had you but granted me a glance  That was not filled with scorn,  Out of its shining radiance  A new star had been born.  You would have lived through lives untold  Beyond the ends of time;  O deity with arms so cold,  O marble form sublime!  An idol of some pagan lore  As now no more is seen,  Come down to us from times of yore,  From times that long

OLD ICONS AND NEW ICONS (1877 essay) (translated by Tatiana Danilova) I. The Reality Sociology, not yet a science, is based on a common and accessible principle, namely that specific events in the life of a nation are subject to immutable laws, which are enforced in a decisive and inevitable way. Writers with vast knowledge of politics have ceased to believe that state and society are conventional issues originating in the citizens' mutual agreement. No one, with the exception of the gobs of ignorant journalists, can claim that the right to vote, the assemblies, and the parliament are a country's foundation. The state must continue to exist with or without them, being subject to immutable, inflexible, and unmerciful natural law. The difference between a constitutional state and a monarchic one is that, while in the first one the struggle for existence of uneducated groups of people finds an echo, in the second that struggle is overseen by a much higher power, nam