A sinner hermit on the Holy Mountain,
I burn in Satan's fire and pine in hell;
My soul is ruins and woe; and in a stream
Deep-flowing, I sink, a traveller beguiled.

The blue Aegean spreads a sapphire treasure;
Like Daphnis and his Chloe stand sky and earth;
Quivering, lo, the seed of life blooms forth;
In swarms, the living beings suck the sap

Of all. Olympus, Ossa, Pelion,
And every lap of sea, and every tongue
Of land, lake-like Cassandra, Thrace's shores

Are clad in wedding garb; and I? "O Lord,
Be my Redeemer!" and with floods of tears
I bathe the god-child Panselenus[13] wrought.

VII[14]

Rumele is a royal crown of ruby;
Moreas is a glow of emerald;
The Seven Isles,[15] a jasmine sevenfold;
And every Cyclad, a Nereid sea-born.

Even the chains of rugged Epirus laugh;
And Thessaly spreads far her golden charms.
Hidden beneath her present waves of woe,
Methinks I look on Hellas, Queen of lands.

For still the ancient fir of valor blooms;
And from the pangs and sighs of ages risen,
The breath of Digenes[16] fills all the land

Breeding a race of heroes strong and new;
And in the depths of green and golden Night
Sings on Colonus Hill the nightingale.

VIII

From Danube to the cape of Taenaron,
From Thunder Mountain's End to Chalcedon,
Thou passest now a mermaid of the sea
And now a statue of marble Parian.

Now with the laurel bough from Helicon
And now with sword barbarian, thou sweepest;
And on the fields of thy great labarum,
I see a double headed image drawn.

The sacred Rock gleams like a topaz here;
And virgins basket-bearing, clad in white,
March in a dance and shake Athena's veil;

But far the sapphires shine of Bosporus;
And through the Golden Gate exulting pass
Victors Imperial triumphantly.

IX

Like the Phaeacians' ship, Imagination
Without the help of sail or mariner
Rolls on; in my soul's depths loom many lands:
Thrice-ancient, motionless like Asia,

And others five-minded and bold like Europe's realms;
Despair like Africa's black earth holds me;
Within me a savage Polynesia spreads;
And always I trail some path Columbian.

All monstrous things of life, the fields aflame
Under a tropic sun, I knew; I wore
The shrouds of the poles; and on a thousand paths,

I saw the world unfurled before my eyes.
And what am I? Grass on a clod of earth
Scorned even by the passing reaper's scythe.

X

A traveller, I found in waveless seas
Calypso and Helena thrice-beautiful;
And on the Lotus Eaters' shores, I drank
The blissful waters of oblivion.

In the sun-flooded land, I stood by him,
The god of the Hyperborean race;
One night—in strange and peerless radiance—
The Magi showed to me the mystic star.

I saw the Queen of Sheba on her throne,
O Soul, light flowing from her fingers' touch;
My eyes beheld Atlantis Isle, that seemed

An Ocean flower beyond a mortal's dreams;
And now the care and memory of all
These things are rhythm to me and verse and song.

XI