You follow hordes that hail you to a throne
Of glaring yellow silk and massive gold,
From which a rain of blood has often rolled
While fires soared through seas of broken stone.
Now hallow every murder, every lust!
As mad as surf against the cliffs your mind
Exults in icy and destroying gust
And scorns the quiet well, the quiet wind.
They stammer their allegiance to your shoe,
The ravished women wail, and one is more
Distraught and shameless in her fear: Before
Your lordly eyes she tears her dress in two.
They bring you coral, diamonds, emeralds, pearls,
As if these were but common trumpery,
The priestess, whom her virgin mantle furls,
Cries: “Take me as your slave!” and bends her knee.
And lonely through a savage scene you move,
Your hair is fouled with offal from the street,
Your pride impatient to frequent the groove
Which sordid creatures plotted with their feet.
Is this, indeed, the land for which you warred?
Oh, disregard the voice that lured and lied!
And do not say that sorrow was your guide,
Nor cast aside the’ raiment of a lord!
The squares are forsaken and silent the song and the lute.
In frantic search I sped
Through palace and church and where dances and tilts are afoot.
How many tears I shed,
And still she fled from me!
Nor is she here, and yet I distinctly recall
How often these battlements beckoned, how turret and wall
Gave joyful prophecy.
I fly from the place where I never have tasted of bliss,
And roam through barren sand.
And uphill and downhill the thistles leave barbs in my flesh,
Like serpents the succulent creepers entwine the land.
Up over here I see
The mountain-top: an island of pastoral green,
A single Thuja tree,
And bushes along the ledge.
Below—as if primitive masters had painted the scene—
The meadows and cities are patterned with spire and bridge.
What new and varied goals!
The glory of evening melts into ochreous swirls.
The cup of a saffron surrenders its fragrance and furls,
And silver manna falls.
Sovereign dream I trusted at heart,
Oh, that your daughters were mates of my mirth
Stauncher than those I encountered on earth.
Long I watched them though I stood apart.
Glittering peacocks tempt through the night,
Spending the shudders we crave for delight,
Larks at dawn with their passionate cry,
Yet majestic as a cloudless sky.
Is the rejoicing in palpable tunes
Which in my mouth have resounded for moons,
A new incarnation and core?
Shall I find my true domains once more?
Silence despair!
Although you long
—But in vain—to possess,
Question and bear,
With conquering song
Master distress.
And so it was taught.
He patiently wrought,
Another year passed.
By south and by east
Deluded at last
He wearily ceased.
An oak overhead,
He shovelled a grave
For mantle and stave,
He felt they were dead.
For quests I prepare,
Unburdened by care.
The sluices broke,
Curbed waters rose higher.
He fought down a tear
And murmured: I fear
On this very oak
I must shatter my lyre.
Doff your mourning mien and vesture,
You are so immersed in grief,
Even if I brought relief
It would seem a mocking gesture.
Why, when all the rest are keeping
Trysts of gladness do you cling
To your pain, forever weeping
With the moon when fountains spring?
Though the storm may lurk and lower
And repeat a winter strain,
Many a rose is still in flower,
Far from ripened is the grain.
Does not faint desire flow
Out from fingers calm and frosty?
Sing the quests of long ago
Lest our sonant string grow rusty.
My early visions! With the dead you vanished,
I lack the strength to stay you in your flight,
From lands that are my birthright I am banished,
So now I taste a splendour tinged with blight.
By rumours of enchantment seized and shaken,
I see the herons, white and crimson, wheel
Across the valley’s blue expanse and waken
The nearby lake that sleeps and shines like steel.
There, as in symmetry of chords she paces,
Her upward pointed finger lifts and takes
Her shrouding garment by its silken laces,
Which in the night she wove of willow flakes.
O subtle game: to guess through veils! Desires,
Spurred by my longing, whispered we were one,
But half-concealed in vines with bloomy spires,
Down to the nearby lake she glided o