[THE TEMPLE]
My knees, bent on thy marble pavement, bleed,
O Temple built apart in wilderness
For an unseen divinity, a goddess
Who from her being's deep abyss reveals
Only a statue wrought by human hand
And even covered with a veil opaque.Methinks I see among thy sculptured columns,
Among thy secret treasures and thine altars,
Ion, the Delphic priest, who lays aside
The snow-white raiment of the sacrifice
And takes up the wayfarer's knotty staff.
I am no ministrant, nor have I held
The dreadful mystic key, nor have I touched
Boldly or timidly the sacred gate
That leads to Life's deep-hidden mysteries.
One sinner more, O Temple, in the midst
Of sinful multitudes, I come to worship.My knees, bent on thy marble pavement, bleed;
I feel the chill of night or of the tomb
Creeping upon me slowly, stealthily.
But lo, I struggle to shake off the evil
That creeps on me so cold; with longing heart,
I drag my bleeding knees beyond thy walls,
Out of thy columns—forests stifling me—
Into the sunlight and the moon's soft glimmer.Away with prayer's burning frankincense!
Away with the gold knife of the sacrifice!
Away with choirs loud-voiced and clad in white,
Singing their hymns about the flaming altars!
Abandoning thee, O Temple, I return
To the small hut of the first bloom of time.
[THE HUT]
O humble hut of the first bloom of time,
Neither the noisy city's mingled Babel,
Nor the most tranquil soul of the great plain,
Nor the gold cloud of dust on the wide road,
Nor the brook's course that sings like nightingales,
Nothing of these is either shown to thee
Or speaks before thy bare and flowerless window,
O humble hut of the first bloom of time.Only the neighbor's step now echoes on
From the rough pavement built in Turkish times;
The black wall's shadow, on the narrow street;
And on the lonely ruins lightning-struck
Ere they became the glory of a house,
The nettles revel lustful and unreaped.
Beneath the bare and flowerless window's sill,
A nest of greenish black, like a small heart,
Hangs tenantless and waits and waits and waits
In vain for the return of the first swallow
That has gone forth, its first and last of dwellers.O thirsty eyes that linger magnet-bound
On the nest's orphanhood of greenish black!
O ears filled with the terror of the tune
That travels to the bare and flowerless window
High from thy roof moss-covered with neglect,
O humble hut of the first bloom of time!
It is the tune the lone-owl always plays
Blowing upon the cursèd flute of night
Its lingering shrill notes of mournful measure,
Herald of woe and prophet of all ill.
[THE RING]
The ring is lost! The wedding ring is gone!
A folk song.
My mother planned a wedding feast for me
And chose me for a wife a Nereid,
A tender flower of beauty and of faith.
My mother wished to wed me with thy charms,
O Fairy Life, thou first of Nereids!And hastily she goes to seek advice,
Begging for gold from every sorceress
And powerful witch, and gold from forty brides
Whose wedding crowns are fresh upon their brows;
And making with the gold a ring enchanted,
She puts it on my finger and she binds
With golden bond my youthful human flesh
To the strange Fairy—how strange a wedding ring!—I was the boy that always older grew
With the transporting passion of a pair
Bethrothed who, lured by longing, countenance
Their wedding moment as an endless feast
Upon a bridal bed of lily white.The boy I was that always older grew
Gold-bound with Life, the Fairy conqueress;
The boy I was that always older grew
With love and thirst unquenchable for Life;
The boy I was that always older grew
Destined to tread upon a path untrod
Amidst the light, illumined. I was he
Whose brow like an Olympian victor's shone
And like the man's who tamed Bucephalus.
I was the nimble dolphin with gold wings,
Arion's watchful and quick deliverer.But then, one day,—I know not whence and how—
Upon a shore of sunburned sands, the hour
Of early evening saddened with dark clouds,
I wrestled with a strange black boy new-come,
Risen to life from the great sea's abyss;
And in the savage spite of that long struggle,
The ring fell from my finger and was gone!Did the great earth engulf it? Did the wave
Swallow it? I know not. But this I know:
For ever since, the binding spell is rent!
And Fairy Life, the first of Nereids,
My own bethrothed, that was my slave and queen,
Vanished away like a fleet cloud of smoke!And ever since, from my first-blooming youth
To the first flakes of silver that now fall
On the black forest of my hair, since then,
Some power dumb and dreadful holds me bound
With a mere shadow fleeting and unknown
That seems not to exist, yet ever longs
And vainly strives to enter into being.And now I am Life's widowed mate and hapless,
Life's great and careless patient! Woe is me!
And I am like the fair Alcithoe,
Daughter of the ancient king, who changed her form
And as a sign of the gods' vengeful wrath
Is now instead of princess a night-bat!
[THE CORD GRASS FESTIVAL]
See far away, what a glad festival
The golden grasses on the meadow weave!
A festival thrice-fragrant with blond flowers!
With the sweet sunrise sweetly wakening,
I also wish to join the festival
And, like a treasure reaper, to embrace
Masses of flowers blond and fresh with dew,
And then to squander all my flower treasure
At my love's feet, for my heart's ruling queen.But the gold-spangled meadow spreads too deep;
And, just as mourning for some dead deprives
A life rejoicing with its twenty years
Of its light raiments of a lily-white,
So is my swift and merry way cut short
By a bad way that lies between, without
An end, beset with brambles and with marshes!The thorny plants tear like an enemy's claws;
And like bird-lime the bad plain's mire ensnares
My feet among the brambles and the marshes,
Where, in the parching sun's enflaming shafts,
The brine, like silver lightning, strikes my eyes!Where is the coolness of a breath? Where is
The covering shadow of a leafy tree?
I faint! My frame is bent! My way is lost!
I droop exhausted on the briny earth,
And in my lethargy I feel the thorns
Upon my brow; the bitter brine upon
My lips; the sultriness of the south wind
Upon my hands; the kisses of the marsh
Upon my feet; the rushes' fondling on
My breast; and the hard fate and impotence
Of this bare world within me.
Where art thou,
My love?
See far, in depths of purple sunsets
Gorgeously painted, the glad festival
That golden grasses on the meadow weave,
The festival thrice-fragrant with blond flowers,
Sees me, and calls me still, and waits for me!