MUSIC
Sweet music sweeps me like the sea
Toward my pale star,
Whether the clouds be there or all the air be free
I sail afar.
With front outspread and swelling breasts,
On swifter sail
I bound through the steep waves' foamy crests
Under night's veil.
Vibrate within me I feel all the passions that lash
A bark in distress:
By the blast I am lulled--by the tempest's wild crash
On the salt wilderness.
Then comes the dead calm--mirrored there
I behold my despair.
Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'
THE BROKEN BELL
Bitter and sweet, when wintry evenings fall
Across the quivering, smoking hearth, to hear
Old memory's notes sway softly far and near,
While ring the chimes across the gray fog's pall.
Thrice blessed bell, that, to time insolent,
Still calls afar its old and pious song,
Responding faithfully in accents strong,
Like some old sentinel before his tent.
I too--my soul is shattered;--when at times
It would beguile the wintry nights with rhymes
Of old, its weak old voice at moments seems
Like gasps some poor, forgotten soldier heaves
Beside the blood-pools--'neath the human sheaves
Gasping in anguish toward their fixèd dreams.
Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'
The two poems following are used by permission of the J.B. Lippincott Company.
THE ENEMY
My youth swept by in storm and cloudy gloom,
Lit here and there by glimpses of the sun;
But in my garden, now the storm is done,
Few fruits are left to gather purple bloom.
Here have I touched the autumn of the mind;
And now the careful spade to labor comes,
Smoothing the earth torn by the waves and wind,
Full of great holes, like open mouths of tombs.
And who knows if the flowers whereof I dream
Shall find, beneath this soil washed like the stream,
The force that bids them into beauty start?
O grief! O grief! Time eats our life away,
And the dark Enemy that gnaws our heart
Grows with the ebbing life-blood of his prey!
Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.
BEAUTY
Beautiful am I as a dream in stone;
And for my breast, where each falls bruised in turn,
The poet with an endless love must yearn--
Endless as Matter, silent and alone.
A sphinx unguessed, enthroned in azure skies,
White as the swan, my heart is cold as snow;
No hated motion breaks my lines' pure flow,
Nor tears nor laughter ever dim mine eyes.
Poets, before the attitudes sublime
I seem to steal from proudest monuments,
In austere studies waste the ling'ring time;
For I possess, to charm my lover's sight,
Mirrors wherein all things are fair and bright--
My eyes, my large eyes of eternal light!
Translation of Miss Katharine Hillard.
DEATH
Ho, Death, Boatman Death, it is time we set sail;
Up anchor, away from this region of blight:
Though ocean and sky are like ink for the gale,
Thou knowest our hearts are consoled with the light.
Thy poison pour out--it will comfort us well;
Yea--for the fire that burns in our brain
We would plunge through the depth, be it heaven or hell,
Through the fathomless gulf--the new vision to gain.
Translated for the 'Library of the World's Best Literature.'