Poèmes

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Poèmes

                           OSCAR WILDE

                             POEMS

                     _Translation and Preface_
                        BY ALBERT SAVINE




                              1907





THE POEMS OF OSCAR WILDE

The _Poèmes_ were published in 1881, then reprinted in 1882 at
United States.

Born in 1856, Oscar Wilde had just completed his studies at Oxford where
he had spent five years at Magdalen College, winning, in 1878,
the Newdegate Prize for his poem _Ravenne_, an echo of emotions and
memories he had brought back the previous year from his trip to
Italy and Greece with Professor Mahaffy.

The _Poèmes_ caused a stir in London literary circles.
Wilde was much discussed.

For some, his work was only the meeting of the shapeless essays of a
schoolboy without originality, hurriedly throwing this
that he had been able to assimilate more or less closely ideas and
civilization of the Ancients.

For others, _Poems_ affected the most false, the most
artificial search for originality.

We saw, to hear them, reign this still style, bypassed,
weird that Lily and the Euphuists, Gongora and the
Precious, and it all failed to mask the emptiness of a soul
unable to think for herself.

For a third group finally, it was necessary to see in the _Poèmes_ as
“The Gospel of a new Creed”. Wasn't Wilde the apostle and the
pontiff of art for the sake of art, the man who made cheap the "powerful
empire with feet of clay ”, of the“ small island deserted by all
chivalry"? With him no more patriotism, no more inveterate hatred of
Popery...

... "_Among his hills_ (of England), said one of his sonnets,
_s is silent this voice which spoke of freedom. Oh! leave her, my soul,
leave her! You were not made to inhabit this vile abode of
traffickers where every day_

"_Wisdom and respect are put on public sale, where the people
coarse utters the enraged cries of ignorance against what is
legacy of the centuries.

"_This disturbs my calm. Also my desire is_

_to isolate myself in dreams of art and supreme culture, without taking
gone neither for God nor for his enemies_ [1]. "

[Note 1: _Théoretikos._]

We could not deny him any attachment to the past and this cult of
things of the past which is part of the intellectual heritage of
the artist. If he did not want to take sides neither for God nor for
his enemies, his disdain for the vile battle, the enraged cries of
ignorance, erected a kind of altar to the past

"_Spirit of beauty, stay a little longer," he sang in his Garden
Of Eros, they are not all dead, your worshipers of old. He lives on it
still a small number of those who radiate your smile
preferable to thousands of victories, even the noble victims
fallen at Waterloo, to stand up furiously against them. Still stay there
a few survives_

"_Who would give their part of humanity for you and devote to you
their existence. I, at least, have done so. I made your lips
my everyday food and in your temples I found a
sumptuous feast, such as this starving century could not have given me, in
despite its brand new doctrines in which so much skepticism presents itself
such a dogmatic form_.

"_There is no Cephise, no Hissus. There are not found
the laws of white Colonos. Never on our pale hills believes
the olive tree, a simple shepherd never makes his roaring bull climb
the high marble steps and you cannot see through the city the
laughing young girls bring you the dress embroidered with crocus _... »

Perhaps this love of antiquity, this disdain of modern commercialism,
we could have forgiven Oscar Wilde on the other side of the Channel if he
had agreed to follow the crowd in some of its rushes against
what she hated. But there again the abyss opened between Wilde and his
contemporaries.

He has since expressed this regret that his father had prevented him from then
make Catholic, the only counterweight to the deviations that were to
derail his soul on the paths of life.

The demonstration of this tendency to a Catholic conversion is not
written in his _Poèmes_ but from their reading it clearly results that
Wilde had brought back from Italy respect and regret for the past ages of
the Papacy. He belonged to this small Protestant elite of artists
and musicians to whom it seemed, after 1870, that there was something
of broken in Roman aesthetics and that with its Pontiff-King Rome had
lost one of its finest jewels.

_For me_, said Wilde, _pilgrim of the North Seas, what a joy it is
set out all alone in search of the marvelous temple and the throne of
the one who holds the formidable keys_.

_While all shining purple and gold, parade and priests and
holy cardinals and that carried above all heads comes the
sweet shepherd of the flock.

_What joy to see, before I die, this only king who is anointed by
God and hear the silver trumpets sound triumphantly on his
passage_.

_Or when at the altar of the sanctuary, he raises the sign of the mysterious
sacrifice and show to mortal eyes a God under the veil of bread and
wine_.

Also with the poet, what disillusionment when he sees in the city
"Crowned by God, uncrown by man", to fly "the odious flag
red, blue and green ”.

It is not that he renounced the cult of freedom, but he never
loved this one for itself. It is only "on certain points" with
those Christs who die on the barricades. He hardly likes children
of Liberty "whose gloomy eyes see nothing except their
misery without nobility, of which the spirits know nothing, care
nothing will know ”. In short,


_Despite this modern itch of freedom, I prefer the
government of one, to which all obey, to that of these democrats
bawlers who betray our independence by the kisses they
give to anarchy! _

What reads his heart vibrate is that



_... The roar of democracies. The reigns of Terror, the
great anarchies, reflect like the sea my most passionate
fiery and curb my rage. Freedom! for that only
your discordant cries Enchant my soul to its depths. Without
that all kings could, by means of the bloody knout and
treacherous machine guns, strip nations of their rights
inviolable, _

"_That I would stay without being moved _..."

He was an irreducible aristocrat, one of that "happy few" who
the joy of living is concentrated around you.

And that is why the world, taking revenge, was so cruel to him!

Albert Savine.





ALAS

  Being driven adrift of all passion until
  that my soul becomes a string lute
  tense which all winds can play, it is for
  that I gave up my ancient wisdom, the austere
  mastery of myself.

  It seems to me my life is a parchment
  on which we would have written twice, where somehow
  holiday day, a childish hand would have scribbled
  empty songs for the flute or the virelai,
  with no other effect than to profane the whole mystery.

  Surely there was a time when I could have walked
  the sunny heights, where among the dissonances
  of life, I could have made a string vibrate enough
  sound to reach the ear of God!

  Is that time dead? Alas! must that for
  have only touched with a light stick the
  romance honey, I'm losing all the heritage owed
  to a soul.





THE GARDEN OF EROS

  Here we are in the middle of spring, in the heart of June;
  not yet the sun-tanned workers hasten on the
  meadows of the heights, where the opulent autumn season
  usurer, comes too soon to offer the trees gold
  that he has set aside, a treasure that he will see dispersed by
  the wild lavishness of the breeze.

  It is very early, really! asphodel child
  Spring darling, lingers to pique jealousy
  rose; the bellflower, too, holds
  unfurled its azure flag. And, like a party animal
  lost, lost, that his brothers left there, to
  flee from the thickets, from which the thrush drove them,
  June messenger,

  alone, a pale narcissus stays there, all scared, crouching
  in a corner of shade, where violets, almost worried
  of their own beauty, refuse to look
  face to face the gold of the sun, by fear of too much
  splendor. Ah! it is there, it seems to me,

  --that would come to rest the feet of Persephoné,
  when she is tired of the meadows without flowers
  of Pluto, where the teenagers would dance
  Arcadians, where a man could find the mystery
  secret of eternal pleasure, that secret that
  Greeks have known. Ah! you and me, we could
  discover it here, as long as Love and sleep
  agree.

  These are the flowers that Herakles deuiisema on
  the tomb of Hylas, columbine, with all its white
  doves shaking with a shiver, when the breeze has
  crumpled with a too rough kiss, the cute celandine
  who, in her yellow petticoat, sings the twilight
  evening, and the lilac in a lady's dress, - but
  let's let them bloom away, let's leave

  over there, the spirals of the hollyhock, to the reds
  serrations, to shake their bells silently, without
  what the bee, its little carillonneur, would look for
  further some other entertainment; the anemone
  who cries at dawn, like a pretty little girl in front of
  his lover, and leaves, with great difficulty
  butterflies open wide, beside her,

  their variegated wings, let it languish in the
  pale virginity, the winter snow will please her better
  only lips like yours, whose burning
  can only wither it. Will you rather pick this
  loving flower that blooms solitary, and that the
  wind, matchmaker, tasty kissing powder
  which are not of him.

  Bindweeds with trumpet-shaped flowers, and
  whom young girls love so much; the meadowsweet,
  cream-colored, whiter than the throat of
  Juno, fragrant as much as the whole of Arabia; hyacinth,
  that the feet of Diana the Huntress would hesitate
  to tread, even in pursuit of the most beautiful of
  spotted fallow deer, bud marjoram, one of which
  one kiss would suffice to embalm the lips of the
  goddess of Kythera, and to make Adonis jealous, - that,
  it's for your forehead, - and to make you a

  belt, - here is this flexible branch of purple clematis,
  whose sumptuous color effaces the
  king of Tire, - and these digitalis with corollas
  drooping, - but for this unique narcissus, that
  let fall from her dress the spring season, when she
  heard with dismay, in the woods where
  she reigned, resounding the fiery, stormy song of
  the summer bird.

  Ah! may it be a subtle memory of those days
  lovely rain and sun, while April was laughing
  through her tears, seeing the early primrose
  stealthily leave the twisting roots of
  oaks, and invade the forest, to the point that despite its
  leaves yellowed and crumpled, it was covered with a gold
  sparkling.

  No, you can pick it too. He doesn't even
  half of your charm, O you idol of my soul,
  and when your feet are weary, the anchuses will weave
  their brightest rugs; for you, the honeysuckles
  will forget their pride and veil their web
  confused, and you will walk on motley thoughts.

  And I will cut a reed in the stream over there,
  and I will make the gods of the woods jealous; the old
  Pan will wonder who is this young intruder who
  emboldened to sing in these hollow retreats
  where no man should risk a foot the
  evening, for fear of surprising Artemis and his troop
  with marble bodies.

  And I'll sink you why the hyacinth is coated
  in such a gloomy adornment of plaintive moans;
  why the unfortunate nightingale refrains from
  start her song eh broad daylight, and prefer to cry
  alone, while the swift swallow sleeps and the
  rich people celebrate; and why the laurel trembles
  seeing flashes of lightning in the East.

  And I will sing about how sad Proserpina was
  married to a grave, to a dark master and lord.
  Hellish meadows sown with lotus I will evoke
  Helen with the silver breasts, and also you will see this
  fatal beauty, for whom two powerful armies
  struck with a terrible shock, in the abyss of
  war.

  Then I'll sing you this Greek tale where Cynthia
  falls in love with young Endymion, and enveloping himself in
  gray veil of mist, stumbles towards the summits of
  Latmos, as soon as the sun leaves its ocean bed,
  to set off in pursuit of those pale feet and
  light that melt under his embrace.

  And if my flute is able to pour a sweet
  melody, we will be able to see face to face that which, in
  long ago, dwelt among men,
  near the Aegean Sea, and whose sad home
  ravaged portico, the wall stripped of its frieze,
  collapsed columns, dominates the ruins of this city
  charming, surrounded by violets.

  Spirit of beauty, stay a little longer: they are not
  not all dead, your worshipers of old; he lives
  still a small number, of those for whom the radiation
  of your smile is better than thousands
  of victories, even if the noble victims fell
  Waterloo rose up furiously against them; rest
  still, a few survive,

  who for you would give their share of humanity, and
  devote their existence to you. At least I have
  did so. I made your lips my food
  every day, and in your temples I found a
  sumptuous feast, such as I could not have given it
  hungry century, despite all its doctrines
  new, where so much skepticism is offered under a
  so dogmatic form.

  There, no Cephise, no Ilissus flows; there no
  the woods of white Colonos are found again. Never
  on our pale hills does not believe the olive tree, never
  a simple shepherd does not make his bull climb
  roaring the high marble steps; Onne
  do not see the laughing young girls in town bringing you
  the dress embroidered with crocus.

  Yet still remains. Because the child who loved you
  better, whose only name should be a memory
  able to hold you back [2], sleeps in silent rest,
  at the foot of the walls of Rome, and the melody
  weeps for having lost his sweetest lyre; no one
  would know how to handle Adonais's lute, and the song is
  death on his lips.

[Note 2: This is John Keats (1795-1821) whom we will publish
soon the _Poèmes_.]

  No, when Keats died, there were still
  Muses an Argentinian voice to sing his threnody,
  but unfortunately! we lost her too soon, on that night
  torn by lightning, in this raging sea, Panthéa
  came to claim as his property the one who had it
  sung, and shut the mouth which had praised her [3];
  since then we go into solitude, we
  have

  more than this fiery heart, this morning star of
  resuscitated England, whose clear gaze, behind
  our crumbling throne, and the ruins of war,
  saw the great Greek forms of the young Democracy
  arise in their power like Hesperus,
  and bring about the great Republic [4]. To him
  the less you taught singing.

[Note 3: Shelley.]

[Note 4: Swinburne who, next to _Poems and Ballads_, is
the author of a tragedy, _Atalante à Calydon_, which we have in
preparing a translation.]

  And he accompanied you to Thessaly, and he saw the
  white Atalante, light footed, virginity
  impassive and savage, hunt the boar armed with
  defenses. Her lute, as sweet as honey, opened
  cave in the hollow hill, and Venus laughs at
  know that a knee will still bend in front of her.

  And he kissed Proserpina's lips and sang
  the _requiem_ of the Galilean. This bruised, stained forehead
  with blood and wine he uncrowned him. The gods of
  once found in him their last, their most ardent
  worshiper, and the new sign fades and fades before
  its winner.

  Spirit of Beauty, stay with us again. She
  is not yet extinguished, the torch of poetry.
  The star that rises above the heights of
  the East invincibly defends its silver coat of arms,
  against the growing darkness, against
  the fury of enemies. Oh! stay with us again,
  for, during the long and monotonous night,

  Morris [5], Chaucer's sweet and simple child,
  the lovable heir to Spencer's melodious pipes,
  has often charmed by its tender country airs
  the human soul in its needs and distresses,
  and fields of ice, far and bare,
  brought back enough beautiful flowers to make together
  an earthly paradise.

[Note 5: William Morris, poet and craftsman, author of the poem
_The History of Sigurd the Volsung_ and _La chute des Niebelungen_, 1877.]

  We all know them, Gudrun, the bride
  strong men, and Aslaug, and Olfason, we
  we all know, and how the giant fought
  Grettir, and how Sigurd died, and what enchantment
  held the king captive, when Brynhild
  was fighting with the powers that declared war on
  all passion. Ah! that many times, during the hours
  summer,

  the long, monotonous hours, while at noon,
  falling in love with a Damascus rose, forgets to resume
  its march towards the West, so that the moon,
  pale usurper, widening her spot, changing her
  thin crescent into a silver disc, and rebuke
  his lazy chariot - how many times in
  the fresh and thick grass,

  far from the game of cricket and the noisy boaters,
  in Bagley, where the bellflowers are ahead of a
  little time of mating for blackbirds and
  linger to wait for the swallow, where the buzzing
  countless bees vibrate in the
  leafy, I stayed to surrender to the tales
  dreamers that his fancy weaves.

  And through their imaginary misfortunes, and
  their fictitious pains, I cried over myself,
  then found good humor in a simple
  gaiety, traveling on this sea of ​​a thousand hues.
  I felt in me the strength and the splendor of the
  storm, without having to suffer the disasters, because the
  singer is divine.

  The little laugh that the water makes when it falls,
  is not so musical, and the liquid gold that accumulates
  in tight piles in the cute city of wax
  does not have so much sweetness. The old half reeds
  withered that swayed in Arcadia, as soon as
  his lips touch them, exhale a harmony
  news.

  Spirit of beauty, linger a little longer, fine
  that the deceitful merchants of commerce profane
  from their iron roads our charming island, and
  that they break the members of Art on
  spinning wheels, alas! although factories
  crowded spread ignorance, rodent worm that kills
  the soul, oh! keep staying.

  For he is at least a man, - he draws his
  name of Dante and the seraph Gabriel, and his double
  laurel burns with an imperishable flame for
  light up your altar. This one likes you, who lives the
  old Merlin get caught in Viviane's trap, and the
  white-footed angels go down the steps
  gold [6].

[Note 6: Gabriel Dante Rosetti.]

  He loves you so much that the universe must be covered with
  clothes in sumptuous colors, and Sorrow
  take a purple tiara, or, without it, he
  would cease to be Sorrow; and Despair should
  gild his horns, and Pain, like Adon, would be
  beautiful even in its excess. This is the empire

  that Painters exercise, such is the heritage that
  possesses our solemn Spirit, for with all his
  pity, his love, his weariness, he is a mirror more
  faithful to his century than are the painters whose
  talent cannot claim a goal higher than
  the copy of banalities, incapable that it is to represent
  the soul with its terrible problems.

  But they are few in number, and all romantic
  dissipated. Men can do
  prophecies about the sun, lessons about the spots,
  teach how soulless atoms travel
  in isolation an infinite void, as of every tree
  fled the weeping nymph, why no naiad
  no longer shows his head among the reeds of England.

  At my pleasure, these modern Actaeons boast
  too soon to have surprised the secrets of Beauty:
  is it necessary, because we analyzed the rainbow
  and stripped the moon of its oldest mystery,
  the most chaste, that I, the last Endymion, I
  lose all hope, because sassy eyes
  eyed my mistress through a telescope?

  What good is it for us that this scientific century has
  burst through our doors with all his retinue
  modern miracles? Can he appease a lover at
  Broken Heart? Can he, in all his duration, do what
  whether to make life more beautiful,
  make her more divine for one day? But now
  the century of clay

  reappears, brought back by a horrible cycle: the Earth
  sired a new and noisy offspring
  of ignorant Titans, that their impure origin launches
  once again against the august hierarchy that sat
  on Olympus. They called on the Dust,

  and it is from this infertile arbiter that they must wait
  sentence. Let them try, if they are able,
  to get out of the natural struggle and chance
  without reason the new rule of the ideal for
  the man! It seems to me that this was not my
  inheritance, because I had been nourished in a very
  opposite. My soul goes from the supreme heights of
  life towards a higher goal.

  See, while we were talking, the Earth turned away
  of God his face, and the boat of Hecate arose
  with its silver load, until finally the day
  jealous put out all the torches. I don't have
  noticed the flight of hours; for young Endymions,
  the paralyzed fingers of Time tickle
  vain his rosary of suns.

  Watch as the yellow iris languishes languidly
  her throat back, to call the kiss of
  his perfidious page, the dragonfly, while this one,
  like a blue vein on the white wrist of a
  young girl, sleeps on the born snowy primula
  that night and that begins to ignite red
  burning with shame, and will die in full light.

  Let's get out of here. Already looming on the pale shield
  from the faded sky the brilliant flowers of the almond tree.
  The meadow rattle, lurking in the still respected grass
  of the scythe, answers the call of his companion;
  the curlews awakened with a start cross with a flight
  irregular the stream covered with mist, and
  in its bed of reeds, the lark, happy to see
  dawn,

  scatter pearls of dew in the grass, and
  all trembling with ecstasy, go greet the Sun,
  soon, under his full golden armor, will come out of
  this orange-colored tent, which here is erected over there
  towards the East on fire. See, the red fringe appears
  on the heights attentive. Here is the God, and
  in her love for him,

  the loud lark is already out of sight and
  fills this valley of silence with his songs. Ah!
  there is more than one thing in the flight of this bird
  that cannot be learned in a retort. But
  the air freshens. Let's go, because soon the loggers will be
  here. What a June night we had!






THE NEW HELEN

  Where have you been, while around the walls
  of Troy, the sons of the Gods fought in this
  great hold? Why do you come back to tread our
  earth to us? Have you forgotten this passionate teenager,
  and his galley with the crimson sails, and his crew
  tyrian, and the mocking eyes of the treacherous
  Aphrodite? Because it is certainly you who, like
  a star suspended in the silvery silence of the
  night, trained the chivalry and the energy of the world
  ancient in the midst of clamors and torrents of
  blood of war.

  Or did you reign on the fiery moon?
  Was your temple built in the loving Sidon,
  above the light and the laughter of the sea? Is this
  there that, veiled by the lattice made of scarlet with
  gold mesh, some young girl with limbs
  browns embroidered a tapestry throughout
  empty and heavy hours of daylight, until
  that his cheek was finally lit from the flames of the
  passion, and that she rose to receive, on her
  lips salted with spray, the kiss of a happy
  Cyprian sailor, safe and sound income from Calpé and
  from the cliffs of Herakles?

  No, you are indeed Hélène herself and not
  another; it was for you that young Sarpedon died,
  and that Memnon's manhood was broke
  prematurely. It's for you that Hector with the crest
  of gold attempted to defeat the son of Thetis in this
  fatal race, in the last year of captivity.
  Yes, still today the shine of your fame
  blazes in these plains of withered asphodel, where
  the great princes, so well known to Ilion, clash
  ghosts of shields, calling you
  by your name.

  Where have you been? In this enchanted land where
  Calypso the forsaken knew the sleeping valleys,
  where no mower ever gets up to greet the
  day, but in which the intact grass was confusedly tangled,
  where the melancholy shepherd saw his ups
  ears remain standing until the time when the red of
  summer gave way to gray tints of drought?
  Were you lying there near some spring
  Letheean, entirely in your memories of the past,
  to the cracking of the spears that break, to the lightning
  suddenly with a shattered helmet, to the war cry of
  Greeks?

  No, you had this hollow hill as a retreat
  that you lived with the one we have lost all memory of,
  that crowned queen that men call
  Erycine, hidden so far away that you couldn't
  never see the face of the one whose today, at
  Rome, the nations silently revere the altars
  decrepit, of the one to whom love brought nothing
  joy, no pleasure, of the one who knew no
  love that intolerable suffering, for whom this
  was only a sword that broke his heart, and
  who only had the pain of childbirth.

  Lotus leaves that heal death,
  you hold them in your hand. Oh be good to me
  while I still know myself in the summer of my life, because
  it's barely if my trembling lips leave
  pass a breath capable of making resound of your
  praise the silver trumpet, I am bowed before
  your mystery, so much I am bent, broken on the
  terrible wheel of love, and I have no more hope,
  more heart to sing. Yet I don't care
  what a disaster the weather can bring, if you
  allow me to kneel in your temple.

  Alas! you refuse to stop here, but like
  this bird that serves the sun, and that flees before the
  north wind, likewise you will flee far from our
  cursed and dreary land to regain the tower where
  once you liked yourself so much, and find your lips
  red of young Euphorion. And for me I don't
  will never see your face again; I will have to stay in this
  garden full of poisons, lay the crown on my forehead
  thorns of pain, until my life
  without love has passed away.

  O Hélène, Hélène, Hélène! A little more
  a little time! Stay here until the
  day come, and the shadows flee, for in
  the sunny light of your reassuring smile, I
  have no thought, no fear about the sky or
  from hell, since I do not know any other deity
  than you, the one at whose feet the tired planets
  move, drawn in golden nets,
  that the embodied spirit of spiritual love, which has
  fixed its abode of pleasure in your body.

  Your birth was not that of ordinary women,
  but surrounded by the silvery splendor of
  the foam, you emerge from the depths of the azure seas, and
  when you come, some immortal star in the hair
  of flame, shone in the skies of the East,
  and awakened the shepherds of the island that was your homeland. You
  will not die. No poisonous asp from Egypt
  to crawl at your feet and infect the purity of
  the air; your hair will not be soiled with bleaks
  poppy flowers, those heralds who, dressed in scarlet,
  announce eternal sleep.

  Love lily, pure, inviolate, ivory tower, red rose
  of fire, you came here below to illuminate our darkness.
  Because for us, which enclose closely the vast
  nets of fate, we who are tired of waiting
  may the desire of the nations come, we wandered
  chance in the obscure abode, we sought to
  let’s grope for some sleepy tranquilizer for lives
  missed, for the miseries that drag on
  until the day that reappeared before us on your altar
  raised, the white splendor of your beauty.




CHARMIDES


I

  He was a Greek teenager, and he was coming back to
  house, with luscious figs and wine from
  Sicily. He stood at the bow of the galley, and left
  unconsciously the spray blowing through his
  big brown curls, and with childish disdain
  for the wave and the wind, from his dripping seat
  of water, he watched through the humid night and
  stormy.

  Finally, in the light of dawn, he saw a polished spear
  emerge like a thin thread of gold on the sky,
  and he hoisted the sail, he stretched out the screaming ropes,
  commanded the pilot to sail briskly against
  the strong north breeze, and all day long it
  stood at his post, directing the rhythm of his
  chants the movements of the rowers.

  And when red appeared on the vague outlines
  from the Corinthian hills, he anchored
  in a small bay with a sandy bottom, laid on his
  head a wreath of freshly cut olive, then
  he took out his linen tunic and his sandals
  with soles of brass,

  and a rich robe tinted with the juice of fish; he
  had bought it from some sooty merchant,
  on the sunny quay of Syracuse, and she was
  adorned with Tyrian embroidery. Then he made his way
  among curious merchants, through
  wood with soft silvery foliage, and when the day
  tired

  had finished its complicated fabric of crimson clouds,
  he went up the steep hill, and with a step
  alert and silent, he slipped towards the temple, unnoticed
  from the crowd of busy priests, and sheltered
  from a dark hiding place he gazed at these young
  shepherds, his turbulent playmates, who brought
  the first fruits of their little flocks, he
  saw the shy shepherd throw

  crackling salt on the flame, or hang over the
  temple wall its carved crook, in honor
  of that which takes away from the farm and the stable the
  treacherous wolf, with teeth sharpened by hunger. Then,
  the young girls with clear voices began to sing
  and each brought some pious offering to the altar,
  a beechwood bowl, filled with foaming milk,
  a beautiful fabric where were ingeniously
  depicted hunting dogs, a honeycomb
  all overflowing with gold still liquid as the bee
  had barely finished working, or a black bottle,
  full of oil, prepared for wrestlers, the remains
  bristling, adorned with its tusks, an enormous
  Boar,

  stolen from Artemis, this jealous virgin, for
  please Athene, and the mottled skin of a great
  deer, which the arrow had reached in the middle
  of a mountain grove. And so the herald
  made a call, and columns of the portico advanced
  one by one the cheerful Greeks, delighted to have
  made their modest offerings.

  And the old priest extinguished the languid flame,
  except the single lamp, flickering ruby,
  which shone perpetually in the cella. The sounds
  piercing lyres diminished in the wind,
  as the countrymen moved away in
  dancing. And with a strong arm, the guard closed
  polished bronze doors.

  Charmides remained motionless for a long time, daring to
  hardly breathe, brushing aside the rhythmic noise that
  falling the drops of wine they petals of roses
  which stood out from the garlands, while the
  night breeze wandered through the sanctuary. One would have said
  that he had passed out in a sort of ecstasy, when at last
  the full moon appeared entirely through
  the opening of the roof,

  And flooded the pavement of
  marble. So the adventurous teenager rushed from
  his hiding place, and opening wide the door to
  carved cedar, he saw himself in front of a terrible image,
  saffron-colored garment, in full armor of
  battle. The skinny griffin shone at the top
  of the vast helmet and the long lance which sows the wreck
  and ruin

  seemed a reddened rod in the fire. The head of Gorgon,
  made of stone and steel, opened wide
  his dead eyes, intertwined on the shield his
  horrible snakes, and their mouths gaping, the
  bloodless lips, frozen in a powerless fury,
  while, quite frightened, the owl with
  dazzled eyes, which stood at the feet of the statue,
  uttered her high-pitched ululation.

  The lone fisherman who revived his lantern, well
  far at sea, off Sunium, or who threw the
  net to catch the tuna, heard the brazen footsteps
  of horses that hit the waves, and saw a terrible
  lightning bolt tear the multiple folds of the curtains
  night, and he knelt on the narrow stern, and in
  his sacred fear, he said a prayer.

  And the guilty lovers, in the very middle of their
  embrace, forgot for a moment their furtive caresses,
  imagining to have heard the cry full of
  threat and anger from Diane; and the harsh watchmen,
  on their high seats hurried to their shields,
  or stretched out their necks bristling with
  black beard over the shadow of the battlements.

  'Cause all around the temple rolled a clicking sound
  arms, and the twelve Gods jumped in fear
  in their marble. The air rings with discordant calls.
  Finally the vast Poseidon brandishes his spear and the horses
  who leap on the frieze began to neigh,
  and from the equestrian procession came a dull sound of footsteps
  who hasten.

  Ready to die, he remained motionless, his lips parted,
  very happy that at such a price he could
  to see this calm and broad forehead, this formidable virginity,
  the wonder of this pitiless chastity. Ah!
  certainly he was happy, because never, since the young
  prince-shepherd of Troy, human creature had
  had such an amazing sight before my eyes.

  He stood still, ready to die, but suddenly
  the air became silent, the horses ceased to
  neigh; he brushed back his thick hair;
  he threw off the clothes that covered his
  members, for which one such love would not force
  not to dare everything; and he blocked her throat,
  and with his sacrilegious hands

  he undid the breastplate and the saffron-colored robe,
  and bared the polished breasts, and finally the peplos slipped
  waist and revealed the secret mystery, the one
  that no Athene lover will show, the great
  cold sides, the crescent of the thighs, the wavy
  snow hills.

  Those who have never committed a sin
  lovers, don't let them read my poem, because
  their ears would perceive only a thin noise and without
  harmony, and would find no charm in it. But
  you, whose faded cheeks still keep track
  with a smile, you who have learned what it is
  that Eros, you others, listen to me one more
  little.

  There was still a short moment to contemplate
  his eyes greedy the polished statue, until
  strength to look at such splendours, his vision
  became confused, and then her lips hungry for pleasure
  satiated on the lips of the statue, and
  he threw his arms around the round neck like a tower,
  and no longer bothered to put a brake on the will
  of his passion.

  Never, it seems to me, lover had a date
  the same, because all night long he whispered
  words as sweet as honey, and he saw the
  limbs so pure in design that no one had touched,
  and without anything preventing him, he kissed the body
  pale, with silver reflections, and he ran his hands
  on the polished breasts, and rested his burning forehead on
  the cold, the icy chest.

  It seemed to him that Numidian javelins were crossing
  blow to his panicked brain, seized with vertigo.
  Her nerves quivered as the strings vibrate
  violins, of an exquisite pulsation, and his suffering
  was such a sweet anguish that he could not untie his
  lips of his, that at the hour when passed above
  the lark's warning with his head.

  Who has never seen dawn take a furtive glance
  in a darkened room, which did not draw the
  curtain, to get up, with dull and weary eyes, from
  of a loved, adored body, take it for granted that
  he will never understand what I'm trying to sing,
  how long did his supreme kiss last, how much
  pleased to prolong his caresses.

  The moon was bordered by a crystal outline, sign
  that seafarers take for an omen of
  heavenly wrath. The faded stars were fading away, and
  the horizon already lit, trembled with a slight tremor
  the wings of the dawn ready to flee, before
  what dark and silent cella this lover
  had gone out.

  He descended the steep rock with a hasty foot; he
  quickly came down the slope, the brave young
  man. He reached Pan's cave, and heard,
  by the way, the snoring of being at the feet of
  goat. He leaps over a mound of grass, and
  like a young peacock, he ran to an olive grove,
  that was in a shady valley, no
  far from the city with beautiful buildings.

  And he looked for a little stream well known to
  him, because more than once, as a child, he had chased
  the green crested grebe, where he had attracted
  in the mesh of a net the silver trout. he
  stretched out full length among the surprised reeds,
  all panting, heart pounding with fear
  mingled with pleasure, and he waited for the day,

  He remained lying on the green shore, leaving his hand
  distracted plunge into the eddies of cold water and
  dark, and soon the morning breath came to fan
  his cheeks burning and reddened, or playing mindlessly
  with the curls that tangled on her
  forehead, while he gazed into the water with a
  strange, a mysterious smile.

  And early the shepherd in the woolen cloak
  coarse opened with the hook of her stick the
  barriers of intertwined branches, and amount of
  a pile of gorse, a thin garland of blue smoke
  unrolled in the air above the ripening wheat.
  And on the hill the yellow house dog barked,
  as the heavy cattle scattered among the
  rustling, curly fern.

  And when the light-footed reaper went to the
  fields by the meadows veiled like a
  lace the threads of the dew, when the sheep bleated
  under the fog of the moor, when the rattle of
  meadows woke up and flew from its nest, lumberjacks
  saw the young man lying near
  from the stream, and wondered with great surprise
  how could a teenager be too
  beautiful.

  And they judged that he was not of the race of
  mortals, and one of them said: "This is the young
  Hylas, that unfaithful vagabond who, forgetting Herakles,
  will have wanted to sleep with a Naiad ”; But
  others said: "No, it's Narcissus, in love with
  himself. These are the caressing lips,
  purpurines, which no woman can attempt. "

  And when they were closer, a third
  cried: "It is the young Dionysus, who will have hidden
  by the brook his spear and his fawn skin,
  tired of hunting with the Bassarid, and we would act
  wisely by fleeing: they do not live
  long, those who come to spy on the immortal gods. "

  So they went away, being careful not to
  turn their heads, and they told the shy shepherd
  how they had seen I do not know what god of
  the forest lying among the reeds, and no one dared
  cross the expanse of the prairie, and on that day, we
  refrained from cutting down a single olive tree, or cutting
  reeds, and the beautiful countryside was deserted,

  except when the herdsman's servant, with his
  well balanced bucket on his back, came in leaps
  light, and showed himself on the other side; he stopped himself
  to make a call, thinking I found a new one
  comrade. But receiving no answer,
  somewhat frightened, the simple child resumed his
  road. Or, coming down from the quiet grove
  and silent,

  a laughing little girl escaped from the farm,
  not thinking of the mysterious secrets
  love, and when she saw the arm of a dazzling
  whiteness, and all his virility, then of a
  long look of envy where passion challenged her
  tender virginity, she watched him for a moment, then slipped away
  pensive and weary.

  From a distance he could hear the hum and
  the tumult of the city, then from time to time
  more shrill laughter, coming from where the young
  boys with brown limbs, in their innocent
  passion, challenged each other to wrestling or running, or
  sometimes the thin ringing of a bell,
  when the ram guided the sheep to the fountain
  covered with moss.

  Through the graying willows danced the gnat
  capricious; from the top of the tree, the turtledove
  launched his monotonous stridulation; the water rat, at the
  oil-gloss fur, swam bravely against
  the current, seeking to discover the duck's nest
  wild; from branch to branch hopped the finch
  fearful, and the massive turtle crawled on the
  silt.

  In the light breeze flitted the silky seeds,
  when the glowing scythe was gaining momentum through
  waves of grass; the water blackbird made gush
  drops in a circle among the reeds, and sowed
  with silver stains the mirror which, in the forest, had
  barely reflected the image of the surroundings, when
  bottom of the water, the dark tench leaped
  to reach the dragonfly.

  As for him, he paid no attention, even
  when the squirrel was having fun going up, down
  on the birch trunk, when the linnet had
  started singing for his mate his most
  sweet serenade. Ah! he paid little attention,
  for he had seen Pallas' breasts and the wonderful nakedness
  of the Queen.

  But when the shepherd called his wandering goats back,
  whistling in his blowtorch, over
  the stony road, when the sounding lucane, like
  a bugle, buzzed in the growing darkness,
  of the woods, when the late crane passed like a
  shadow to regain his home, when large
  raindrops fell heavily on the
  leaves of the fig trees, he got up.

  He left the dark forest, walked along in the darkness
  the walls of the farm and the fence of the wet orchard
  ; he finally arrived at a small quay, took up
  aboard his sailors, resumed his place on the high stern,
  and out to sea, he relaxed the dripping sail.

  He crossed the bay, and when nine suns had
  descended the steps of the long golden roll, when
  nine pale moons whispered their prayers to
  their confessors, the chaste stars, or told their
  the most cherished secrets of the velvety butterflies that
  refuse to fly in the open, so through
  the foam and stormy spray,

  came a large owl with yellow eyes
  sulfur. She landed on the ship whose
  frames cracked as if the vault had
  contained the load of three merchant ships. She
  flapped its wings, and uttered a shrill cry, and immediately the
  Darkness thickened in space. Orion's sword
  returned to its scabbard, and the dreaded Mars itself
  ran down.

  And the moon hid behind a mask at the
  rusty tint from wandering clouds.
  And from the edge of the ocean rose the red egret, the
  vast horned beaume, the spear of seven cubits, the
  brazen shield, and clothed in all her armor
  brilliant and polished, Athene is taking
  the expanse of the terrified and shivering sea.

  In the weary eyes of the sailor, his flowing hair
  appeared like the cloud torn by the storm,
  and his feet were but the foam that floats on the
  hidden breakers. And seeing the waves rise from
  more and more and cause the ship to roll
  more violent, the pilot shouted at the young limonier who
  was holding the bar to tack on the side from which the
  wind.

  But he, the too daring adultery, the charming
  violator of the august mysteries, as a loving idolater
  of ardent love, when he saw those big eyes
  merciless, he was seized with a loud joy, and
  uttering this cry: "Here I am", he rushed forward from
  stern in the tumult of icy waves.

  So fell from the heavens a brilliant
  star, a dancer separated from the circle of the Way
  Milky, and on her resounding chariot, in all the pride
  of the avenged deity, ringing his armor
  from the shrill sound of steel, the pale goddess resumed
  the way to Athens, and some bubbles were rising
  bubbling, where the teenager had fallen
  who had fallen in love with her.

  And the mast shook when the great owl
  left with mocking howls, before
  to join the irritated Queen, and the old pilot ordered
  to the frightened crew of hoisting the mainsail
  and told that he had seen very close to the stern a
  vast and indecisive appearance. And like a swallow
  which skims the water in its flight, the solid ship
  rushed through the storm.

  And no one ventured to speak of Charmides;
  it was believed that he was guilty of some
  big fault. Then when the sailors reached the
  Straits of Symplégades, they pulled their galley
  dry, and hastened to enter the city by the door
  customs and display their pottery in the market
  painted in brown clay.


II

  But one of the gods Tritons, taken with pity, reported
  on Greek soil the body of the drowned youth.
  The sirens combed her hair weighed down by
  water, smoothed his forehead, reopened his clenched hands.
  Many brought sweet perfumes from the
  distant Arabia, and others commanded at the alcyon
  to sing his most lullaby song.

  And when he got closer to his old home
  from Athens, suddenly arose a powerful wave, and
  on the glossy back of this wave formed a layer
  solid foam, with iridescent hues of a strange
  fancy, and locking it in her glass bosom, she
  carried it downwind to the ground, like a stallion
  white mane pursuing an adventurous goal.

  Now, from the side where Colonos looks towards the sea,
  extends a long, well leveled lawn; the rabbit
  knows her, and for her the mountain bee abandons
  Hymeite. And the Yellow is not afraid of it, because
  at no time of the day you can hear
  noise more terrible than the cries of the young shepherds
  in their games.

  But often the hunter stealthily, when he
  comes out of the thorny labyrinth, of the inextricable
  clutter of the surrounding wood, sees the young
  Hyacinthe throwing the polished disc. So he pulls his
  hood over his guilty eyes and don't risk
  point to ring its horn, - or even from the first
  dawn light,

  arrive the Dryads, who throw the ball
  leather, along the reed-strewn shore, and surrounding
  some Pan with goat ears impose on him
  the task of being their guardian, if they fear
  to be delighted by the daring Poseidon. They loosen
  their belts, their eyes full of fear and dismay,
  as if his blue arms and his red beard
  were about to emerge from the wave.

  Here and there in the rock opens a cave that the
  viburnum lines its yellow bells; the strike is
  united, except where some wave of the flow has left its
  slight imprint on the sand, as if it
  was afraid of being too quickly forgotten by the green reed,
  his playmate, and yet this place

  is so small that the inconstant butterfly could,
  before noon, steal their treasure from all the flowers
  of honey, without being able to satiate his love too much
  greedy, and in less than an hour, a young moss
  landed, if he worked hard, could
  pick something to decorate the bow with a garland
  painted with its galley,

  and would leave the little meadow almost entirely
  stripped, for she has no sumptuous flowers,
  except the rare daffodils that stand
  here and there, dotting the grass with silver stars ever
  broke, except for a few asphodels which
  brandish cute scimitars.

  This is where the flow came to deposit, happy
  for having endured such sweet bondage, and he carried the teenager
  where the ground was free of all contact with
  the sea, on the silver margin of the shore, and
  like a lover who lingers, there came more than one
  times kiss those pale limbs that once burned
  intense ardor,

  before the water of the sea extinguished this holocaust,
  this flame which fed on itself,
  this passionate pleasure, before dying death,
  with his frozen and withering breath, would have withered these
  white and red lilies, which, while the young man
  wandered through the forest, exchanged their antiphons and
  so charming responses.

  And when at dawn the wood nymphs, standing
  by the hand, paraded in the wooded valley,
  their satyr saw the body of the ephebe lying on
  the sand. He feared a treachery of Poseidon; he
  cried out, and like bright rays of the sun
  which are played among the branches, all
  Frightened dryads searched in the leaves
  a secure retirement,

  with the exception of a white girl, who
  found nothing too terrible to feel her breasts
  pressed by the loving tyranny of a sea god.
  She would have liked to listen to these charms
  subtle patterns that insidious lovers weave when they
  want to conquer a well-closed fortress: she
  stealthily moved away from the others, and did not believe that
  it was a mistake

  to abandon his treasure to such a beautiful being.
  She stretched out beside him, her throat parched from the
  thirst for love. She called him the sweetest names,
  played with her messy hair, and her lips
  burning ravaged the young man's mouth, fearing
  that he did not wake up, and then fearing
  that he woke up too soon, walking away, then,
  how love made her unfaithful to herself,

  she resumed her attacks. And all day long
  she remained seated next to him. She laughs at her new
  toy, took her hand, sang her song
  sweetest, then frowned at this
  child so unwilling to embrace her virginity. She
  was unaware that for three days these eyes had been
  reopened before Proserpine;

  she was also unaware of what sacrilege those lips
  had committed; so she said to herself: "He will wake up,
  I know it very well, he will wake up in the evening, when the
  sun will hang its red shield on the citadel
  of Corinth: this sleep is only a cruel artifice
  to be loved more, and in some cave
  Marine,

  "To depths that never reaches the line
  from the fisherman, already some enormous newt is blowing
  in its conch and with the crystalline branches that
  float in the ocean, he weaves a garland for
  adorn the emerald pillars of our nuptial bed;
  that's where, sounds a vault made of silver foam
  and the head crowned with coral,

  "We will both sit on a throne
  pearls, and a blue wave will serve as a canopy,
  and at our feet the water snakes will curl under
  their diamond-chain amethyst armor, and
  we will follow eyes in their movements, around
  from the mast of a boat swallowed up by the storm,

  "The mullets with vermilion fins,
  that looks like carved in gold, and that look like
  bursts of crimson light; the deep abyss
  will open the glass doors of his palace, and we
  will see the spotted dolphins sleeping in the cradle
  alcyons which murmur from the top of the rocks, where
  Proteus, in the weird green suit, grazes his flock
  monsters,

  "And the quivering anemones with opaline hues,
  who wave their purple fringes when
  we put our feet on the shimmering ground, and
  whole fleets of scaly fish
  color of fire will follow the floating ropes of
  the shattered wreckage, and grains of amber the color of
  honey will adorn our intertwined limbs. ”

  But when the warlord, the sun,
  passed, disappointed as he fluttered his pennon
  bright colors, before returning to his home
  of brass, when, one by one, the little stars
  yellows appeared scattered in the fields of the sky,
  oh so she feared her lips would refuse
  to quench her thirst with her own lips,

  and shouted: "Wake up: already the pale moon is pouring
  his money on the trees, and the wave stretches close
  close by, gray and icy on this sandy shore;
  the croaking frogs show up, and from the background
  from the cave the nightjar utters its shrill cry; the
  bats fly in all directions, and the weasel
  brunette with hollow lianas crawls through the shadows
  grass.

  "No, although you are a God, don't show yourself
  not so fierce; because there is a little cane there
  who often repeats in a low voice how a young
  charmer seduced her one day on the grass of the
  meadow and when he had given himself all his cruel pleasure,
  spread golden wings rustling, and
  flew to the sun.

  “Don't be so shy; the laurel still trembles
  kisses from the great Apollo, and the pine, of which
  the grouped sisters crown the hill, could
  say a lot about the bold kidnapper that men
  call Boreas; and I saw the smirking eyes of Hermes
  through the silvery foliage of the poplar.

  "Even jealous Naiads tell me pretty, and
  every morning a young gallant with a tanned complexion makes me
  the court, giving me apples and curls of
  hair; he seeks to overcome my virginal disdain,
  with the gifts that charming nymphs love
  Woodland; just yesterday he brought me a dove at
  iridescent plumage,

  "With small crimson-colored feet, that the
  cruel child had stolen from the top of a sycamore tree,
  with its laying of seven speckled eggs, during
  that the male in love had flown away to
  look for juniper berries, their favorite food;
  the whimsical wasp, the most hasty of the grape harvesters,

  who pick the blue grapes, is not more tenacious
  in his constancy, that this simple little shepherd,
  wanting my lips dull, he is so happy and
  pure. Her eyes full of life and sun would make you forget
  to a Dryad the oath made to Artemis,
  he is handsome, and his lip is made for kissing him.

  "His forehead white with silver, like a moon which
  looms over the dark hills of the rendezvous, a
  the shape of a crescent. The ardor of the Tyrian noon
  could evoke from the grove of myrtle a husband
  more charming for Kythera. The first and
  silky down lines her blushing cheeks, and her
  young limbs are strong and brown.

  "And he is rich: bleating flocks of fat
  sheep with thick fleeces cover its meadows, and
  in his house, many clay pots full of
  yellowed curds invite the thieving fly to frolic
  and drown. The plain covered with crimson clover,
  keeps him his sweet treasure, and he knows how to play the pipe
  oats.

  “And yet I do not love him. It was for you
  that I kept my love. I knew you would come
  one day deliver me from this pale chastity, oh
  you, the most beautiful flower of the wave that does not bloom,
  across the vast Aegean Sea, the brightest
  stars in the azure sky of the Ocean, where are reflected
  the planets.

  "I knew you would come, because as soon as the
  withered branches sprouted, as soon as the
  spring sap swelled my green and tender bark,
  or that it springs up in myriads of flowers
  who mocked the hour of midnight by their lunar form,
  without fear of dawn, as soon as the
  happy songs of the starling

  "Woke up the sleeping squirrel among its provisions
  of grains, as soon as the cuckoo flowers bordered
  of a fringe the narrow clearing, through my young people
  leaves an ecstasy of voluptuousness spreads like a
  new wine, and in all my veins of foam
  beat the restless pulse of loving blood, and the
  strong winds of passion shook virginity
  of my slender rod.

  "The fawns came in herds in the evening and posed
  their fresh black nostrils on my branches
  lower, while on the higher, the blackbird was
  a little nest of blades of grass for his companion.
  And every now and then a wren rested on a
  thin branch, barely able to carry a weight
  so sweet.

  “Near me, the shepherds of Attica gave
  meetings; under my shadow lay Amaryllis,
  and around my trunk Daphnis continued
  fearful girl until finally tired of playing, she
  felt her disheveled hair stir under a breath
  ardent. So she turned around and looked and didn't look
  more to escape the sweet trap.

  "So come in my ambush, where the crowding
  of sylvan honeysuckle intertwines a
  vault for the pleasures of love, where the shivering shadow
  paphian myrtles seem to sanctify the
  the most tender rites of pleasure, over there in the
  fresh and green retreats from his deepest asylums,
  the forest conceals a small lake

  "Haunted by the waterbird, pasture of the wild bee,
  because all around its edges float the big ones
  creamy white lilies, held as if by
  green anchors by their large leaves. Each corolla
  is a skiff with white sails, laden with gold,
  with a dragonfly placed at the tiller. Do not hesitate to
  to leave this pale shore that the wave comes kissing.
  Surely this place is meant

  “To lovers like us; the reigning goddess
  in Cyprus often comes, the arm embracing the waist of
  her young lover, get lost there in the evening, and I saw
  the moon throwing back her garment of mists before
  the eyes of young Endymion. Don't be afraid, Diane
  in a panther's step never tread this clearing
  unknown.

  "Or, if you refuse, let's go back to the sea
  salty, back to the tumultuous wave, and
  we walk all day under the crystal vault
  whose waters make a portico for Neptune and let us contemplate
  the purple monsters of the abyss in
  their awkward games, let's see them leap from retirement
  the cunning Xiphias.

  "Because if my mistress catches me lying here,
  she will show no hesitation, no tender
  pity. She will lay down the spear for the boar, and
  with her stern, inexorable fingers, she will stretch the bow
  of dogwood, and bringing the slit closer to its breast
  flanked by the arrow, it will let go of the bent string.
  Yes, right now she is looking for me.

  “I hear his hurrying footsteps. Stand up, soldier,
  deserter from the love battle, make me drink
  at least a long sip of passion wine,
  quench my thirsty being with this delicious nectar
  who intoxicates even the gods. Come my love,
  we still have time to reach the house
  blue. "

  No sooner had she finished than the trees stirred
  of a shiver. The foliage opened and we felt
  soon the presence of a deity, and the gray waves
  crawled backwards. A long and scary roar
  came out of a trunk adorned with fringes. A
  the pack dog barked, and like a flame a
  feathered reed crossed the clearing whistling,

  and even where the flowers of her breast came
  to bloom in their splendor, this murderous lover,
  this unexpected guest, entered, planted himself deeply,
  made an invisible passage, and hollowed out with his point a
  bloody furrow, cleared a long red road
  and the wings of death split his heart.

  Exhaling his life in a sob, in a cry of
  despair, the young Dryad fell on the body of
  the teenager. She was sobbing about her remaining virginity
  fruitless, on the delicacies of which she had no
  enjoy, on the dead pleasures, all the pain
  things that have gone unrewarded, and the drops
  brilliant of his youth flowed in a stream of
  purple on its pulsating side.

  Ah! it was a pity to hear his complaint, it was
  great pity to see her die before she had done
  present of its charms, or experienced the joy of
  passion, this formidable mystery, such as ignoring it,
  it is not to live, and yet one cannot
  know him without being caught up in the heaviest
  chains of death.

  But by chance, the Queen of Kythera, who had
  spent the night with Adonis, in the hut
  of an Arcadian Shepherd, returning to Paphos, on his
  gilded wooden chariot drawn by silver doves,
  sailed at heights that cannot be reached by the eye of
  mortals, between the mountains and the morning star;

  She looked down at the earth, and saw the
  unfortunate couple. She heard the faint cry of
  despair escaped the Oread, cry whose vibrations
  condensed seemed to play in the air, as
  the sounds of a viol. In all haste, she ordered to
  his two pigeons to close their outstretched wings with
  effort. She swooped down on the earth, reached the shore and
  saw their painful fate.

  For, like a gardener, turning his head away
  to catch the last songs of the linnet on the fly,
  slice of a carefree scythe a flower bed
  of flowers that were too close, and cutting sharply
  the frail stalk of the rose, throw on the brown soil the
  scattered charms of the flower, as well as a young shepherd
  in his inattention,

  while leading his little flock through the meadow,
  lie under his foot two asphodels which, growing
  side by side, seduced the ladybug in their nets
  yellow, and makes the brilliant butterfly forget all its
  pride, crush their dripping chalices against the ground
  of gold, under light feet that were not made
  for such cruel devastation,

  or like a schoolboy, when, bored of his book,
  he lets himself go on the grass strewn with rushes and picks
  in the stream two irises, then weary of their
  beauties, and goes away, leaving them to murderous ardor
  of the sun - thus lay the two lovers.

  And Venus exclaimed: "It is the ruthless Artemis
  whose cruel hand has committed this mischief, or
  it is perhaps the work of this powerful deity if
  anxious to preserve her sovereign majesty of
  all profanation on the Athenian hill; - Alas!
  must beings capable of so much
  love descend without having loved in the living room
  of death?"

  So, with her gentle hands, with tenderness, she
  placed the teenager and the girl in the cart
  Golden. White throat, whiter than a crescent
  pearl, and barely scratched the network of
  blue vein, had not stopped throbbing yet,
  and her bosom still swayed like a lily that the
  wind agitates with an uncertain breath.

  So the two pigeons spread their wings
  milk white, and the shining chariot sailed through the
  sky, where dawn stood; and the aerial caravan,
  like a cloud, passed silently over
  the Aegean, until the hour when the light air was disturbed
  by the song of the languid voices that call
  all night bloodied Thammus.

  But when the doves had reached their goal
  accustomed, where the wide marble staircase with
  circular steps plunges its snow into the sea,
  the fluttering soul of the young girl waved one last
  times her lips, trembling petals, and exhaled in
  the void. And Venus saw as her retinue counted
  a pretty girl less.

  And she commanded her servants to carve
  on a cedar wood coffin all the wonders
  of this story. It was in this fragrant bosom
  that their limbs would rest, where the olive trees
  soften the blue tint of the sky, on
  small hills of Paphos, where the fauna plays
  flute in high noon, where the nightingale sings up
  dawn.

  And they did not fail to carry out his orders, and
  before the morning bee had pierced the asphodel
  raging blows of his thin sting, before
  the vigilant ten-horn, leaving its rest, would have
  leap crossed the stream, and made the blackbird leave
  of water, before the lizard had climbed on the rock
  warmed by the sun, their bodies lay under
  the grass.

  And when the day broke, in this silver shrine
  where the flames of the tripods shine eternally
  vibrating, Queen Venus knelt down, implored
  Proserpina, for her, whose beauty had rendered
  in love with the God of death, would kindly ask
  a favor to her pale husband, and obtain that he
  let Desire pass with the terrible Charon the
  passage of the glacial river.


III

  In the melancholy Acheron, where does not shine
  of the moon, far from the good Earth, far from the happy day,
  where no spring shows its buds, where
  no ripening sun bends the apple trees, where
  May, the flowering month, do not strew the grass
  flowers of the chestnut tree, where the
  blackbirds, where piping linnets never pair,

  there, near a lethean spring with troubled waters
  and sonorous, lay young Charmides. Of a
  weary hand, he had plucked the flowers of the asphodel,
  and scattered over the dreary waters of the black stream
  the little treasure he had collected, and he watched it disappear
  the white stars, and all that surrounded it
  was like a dream,

  when looking in the mirror
  waters, through the mess of her curly hair,
  he thought he saw a shadow pass over his image
  and a small hand slipped into his. Hot
  lips timidly brushed her pale cheeks and
  their secret whispered to him in a sigh.

  So he turned his weary eyes back, and he saw.
  And their faces came closer and closer.
  Their young mouths drew so close that one
  would have said a rose of flame, unique and perfect, and
  he felt her bosom throbbing, and her breath warming,
  was accelerating.

  And he gave her all the caresses he had
  held in reserve, and she made him the sacrifice of
  all her virginity, and member against member, in
  a long and voluptuous ecstasy, their passion increased
  and calmed down. Oh! why, blowtorch too
  adventurous, risk yourself singing love again;
  enough to say that Eros made his laughter resonate
  on this flowerless meadow.

  O too daring poetry, why try to
  sing the passion again? Fold your wings on the
  reckless Icarus, and let your lai sleep on the
  silent strings of the lyre, until the day you
  will have discovered the ancient source of Castalie, or
  plucked in the lesbian waters the golden feather that
  Sappho dropped, drowning.

  It is enough, it is enough to say that the being whose
  life had been a fiery and guilty pulse, a
  splendid infamy, could in the land without love where
  reign Hades, glean a burning harvest from these
  fields of flame, where passion wanders barefoot,
  without shoes and yet without getting hurt. Ah!
  it's enough that only once their lips could
  to meet,

  in that ardent palpitation where entire existences
  seem to condense into a single ecstasy,
  and who dies in the excess of pleasure, in
  tension of convulsive pleasure, before Proserpine
  designated them to serve her around the ebony throne
  where sits the pale God who untied his belt in
  the campaigns of Enna.




PANTHEA

  No, let's go from one fire to another, suffering
  passionate to a more deadly pleasure.
  I'm too young to live without desire, you are too much
  young to waste this summer night doing these vain
  questions that man has long been asking
  to the seer and to the oracle, without receiving an answer.

  Because, my dear friend, better to feel than to know,
  and wisdom is an inheritance without children. A
  wave of passion, the first fiery explosion
  of youth, that is well worth the proverbs
  accumulated by the wise. Do not torment your
  soul of a dead philosophy; don't we have
  lips to kiss him, hearts to love and
  eyes to see?

  Can't you hear the whisper of the nightingale, same
  to water that sings out of an urn
  silver? So sweet is this song that it makes the
  moon of spite at being suspended at such a height
  in the sky, and not being able to hear this melody
  ravishing with love - see how she wriggles
  with mist its two horns, the late moon
  in its task.

  White lilies, cups in which the
  golden bees, the snow formed by fallen petals,
  when the breeze scatters the flowers of the chestnut tree,
  or the radiance of the bodies of ephebes reflected by
  water - is not all this enough for you? Do you want
  something more? Alas, the Gods will not give
  never anything more of their eternal treasure.

  Because our great Gods ended up getting tired, by
  get angry with all our endless sins, our vain
  effort to expiate by suffering, by prayer,
  or by the priest, the waste of the days of youth,
  and never, never do they lend the slightest
  attention, either to good or to evil, but in
  their indifference, they make rain fall on the
  fair and unfair.

  They take their ease, our gods. They take
  their ease. They dot their rose petals
  fragrant wine. They sleep, sleep under the trees
  lullabies where the asphodel and lotus yellow intertwine.
  They miss the happy days of old, when they
  did not yet know what one can dream of wrong,
  and do while dreaming.

  And far away, below the bronze pavement, they
  see as a swarm of flies the crowd of
  little men, the bustle of petty existences,
  then in their boredom, they return to their stay
  among the lotuses, and kiss each other on
  lips, and drink the liquor longer
  prepared with the seeds of the poppy, which brings
  sweet sleep with purple eyelids.

  There, all day long, the sun on the clothes
  of gold, remains standing, holding in hand his flaming torch,
  and when the fabric varied from the hours of the day
  was completed by the twelve virgins, so through
  the crimson fog is advancing the moon, barely
  escaped from the arms of Endymion, and the immortal gods
  swoon in the trances of deadly passions.

  Up there Queen Juno walks among the dew
  meadows, its large white feet stained by
  saffron dust of lilies agitated by wills, during
  that the young Ganymede frolic in the must
  burning with amber foam; and her curls flutter
  on all sides, as in the day when the eagle ravishes on
  Ida the frightened child, and carried him through the
  ionian sky ...

  Up there, in the green background of some fine garden
  closed, Queen Venus, having the shepherd at her side,
  close to her body soft and warm, like the flower
  of eglantine, who would like to be white, but who
  blushes with his pride, laughs low in his love,
  so that the jealous Salmacis, spying through the
  foliage of myrtles, sigh in pain
  solitary pleasure.

  Up there never blows this terrible north wind
  which leaves our forests of England dull and bare,
  rapid snow never falls there in white down,
  never does the lightning with red indentations risk
  wake them up in the silver-rimmed night, while
  we cry over some sweet and sad fault, over
  some dead delight.

  Alas! them, they know the distant source of
  Lethe, they know them well, the waters that hide
  among the violets, where the one whose bruised feet
  are weary of wandering, can regain courage and walk,
  and drink from these depths the fresh and crystalline water,
  to draw from it a balm of sleep for the souls that
  flees from sleep, numb pain.

  But we compress our natures; God, or the
  Destiny is our enemy. Enough of this despair that
  everywhere accompanies the pleasure, enough of all the
  temples that we have built, enough of having made
  righteous prayers never answered, for man is
  weak, God sleeps, and the sky is high. A moment
  brilliantly colored, one great love, and voila
  that we die.

  Ah! no boatman, laboriously handling the gaff,
  don't push his black rowboat towards the shore without
  flowers. No small bronze coin can
  carry the soul over the river of death to the land
  without sun. Victims, libations, vows, everything is useless;
  the grave is sealed; the dead do not rise
  point.

  We dissolve in the air of the high regions;
  we become things identical to
  those we touch; each crimson ray of
  sun owes its shine to the blood of our heart: everything
  star moved by spring owes our young lives
  its deployment of green flame; the most bleats
  savages who beat the brush are related to us;
  all life is one and all is change.

  A single beat of systole and diastole,
  effect of one vast existence, lifts the heart
  giant of the Earth, and the mighty waves of being
  single wave from the germ without nerve, until
  man, because we are a part of
  all. Rock, bird, animal or hill, we don't
  let us become one with the beings who devour us, with
  the beings we kill.

  Lower cells where life awakens us
  let us pass to the fullness of perfection; so
  the Universe ages. We who are today
  like gods, we were once a
  shuddering mass of purple barred with gold lines,
  insensitive to joy and suffering, and tossed about
  in the terrible mazes of raging seas under the
  gusts of wind.

  This fiery and vigorous flame that burns
  our bodies, it may make asphodel shine
  some meadows, yes, and those silver breasts, the
  hey, will become pearls of water. Brown lands
  that men plow will be made more fertile
  by our loves last night. Nothing is
  lost in nature; all things live in spite
  of death.

  The teenager's first kiss, the first
  hyacinth bell, the last passion of
  man, the last red spear that shoots out
  of the lily, the asphodel who does not want to leave
  flowers bloom in fear of its too great beauty
  and out of modesty, like that experienced by
  young bride under the gaze of her lover, this
  are there so many things

  consecrated by a single sacrament. We don't
  we are not alone in having the passion of the marriage.
  The earth also tests it. The yellow buttercups,
  that laughter shakes, know at dawn
  a pleasure as real as us, when in a wood
  full of fresh flowers, we breathe spring
  on our heart, and feel that life is good.

  So when the men bury us under
  the yew, your mouth like a purple stain, will become
  a rose, and your sweet eyes will be bluebells
  dark blue, obscured with dew, and when the
  daffodil white will giddily throw his kisses at the
  wind, his playmate, a wave remains of joy
  will stir our dust, and we will become again
  young girl and young man in love.

  And so, without having cruel pain of life
  which comes to it from consciousness, in some flower
  lovely we will feel the sun, we will sing
  again by the throat of the linnet, and as
  two serpents dressed in a sumptuous cotton
  stitches, we will pass over our graves, or,
  couple of tigers, we will crawl through the scorching jungle,
  to the place where the huge lions sleep
  with yellow eyes

  and we will fight them. Like my
  heart leaps at the thought of this great afterlife
  death, of this passage through the beast, the bird, the flower,
  when this cup containing too much spirit breaks
  to breathe more easily, and with the faded leaves
  of autumn, the soul, which was the first to conquer
  earth, will be the last and noble prey of
  Earth.

  Oh! think about that! we will wear all
  forms capable of sensual life; the fauna
  goat's feet, the centaur or the eyed elves
  sparkling with gaiety, which leave rings for
  trace of their dances, in the meadow, in order to tease
  dawn, and are no closer than you
  and I of the mysteries of nature, because we will hear

  beat the blackbird's heart, and the daisies grow,
  and the failing snowdrop sigh after the
  sun, in the dark days of winter; we'll know
  by whom are smoothed the silvery threads of the Virgin,
  to whom the variegated fritillaries owe their painting,
  and which gives the eagle wide wings to fly with
  pine shivering at another.

  Yeah, if we never loved, who knows if
  this asphodel here would have attracted the bee to
  her golden breast, or if the rose had ever suspended
  all its branches its crimson lamps. To this
  as it seems to me, no leaf should ever
  bud in spring, if not for the lips
  what do lovers have for the kiss, for the lips
  with which the poets sing.

  Should the sun therefore lose its light, or this
  lip shaped by the art of Daedalus less
  beautiful, because we inherit from nature, and
  let us become one with every beat of the vital pulse
  who stirs the air? That rather new suns roam
  the sky, may the flower take a new one
  splendor, and be one more charm for the prairie.

  And the two of us who love, don't go
  sit aside to criticize nature, but
  may the merry sea be our garment, and may
  the hairy star shoots its arrows at our pleasure! We
  will be part of the grandiose ensemble of all
  things, and throughout the succession of eons we
  we will mingle, we will get lost in the cosmic soul,

  We will be notes in this great symphony
  whose cadence goes from circle to circle
  forms the rhythm of all spheres, the heart of
  the whole universe, beating with life, will be one with
  our heart. The years that come stealthily
  have now lost the terrors that we
  were chatting: we will not die: the universe itself
  will make our immortality.





HUMANITAD

  Here we are in the heart of winter. The trees are
  stripped, except where the cattle hide to
  resist the cold, under the pine, because it does not
  never the brilliant livery of autumn, to which its
  jealous brother steals his gold. For him, he faithfully keeps
  his green suit; bitter is the wind,

  as if it were blowing from the cave of Saturn.
  A few thin handfuls of hay still stick
  with brightly drawn hedges in black, where the
  carter brought back the scent load of a day
  summer, from the meadows below to the slope
  narrow. On the half-melted snow, the bleating
  sheep huddle up against the barriers, and the dogs
  servants, all numb,

  go from your closed stable to the frozen stream, and come back
  look discouraged, and regret the scolding shepherd
  and the noisy team. And in the heights,
  circling aimlessly, croaking crows
  spin around the white grindstone of
  frost, or stand in a tight row on the twigs
  dripping, and in the swamp the patches of
  ice crack

  under the solemn footsteps of the gaunt heron who goes
  through the reeds, flaps its wings and pulls its neck in
  back, and utters a mocking cry at the sight of the moon.
  Through the meadows goes with a lame foot the
  poor frightened hare; that we would take for a
  little spot. And a stray seagull throwing out its clamor
  irritated, fluttering like a sudden fall
  of snow under the dull gray sky.

  It's the middle of winter, and the robust peasant brings back
  from the frozen stable its load of bundles, stamps its foot
  on the hearth, throw the logs on the languid fire
  sips of sap, and laughs at the sudden gush
  flame, frighten his children in their
  games. And yet ... spring is in the air.

  Already the hail crocus is making its way through the
  snow, and soon the white countryside goes
  new to bloom with primroses that will come to mow
  some young guy, because from the first kiss
  of a warm rain, the frozen melancholy of winter
  is resolved in tears. The brown starlings mate,
  and the rabbit, bright eyes, spy

  from its dark burrow on which side are sown the
  fir cones. He crushes a snowdrop with his foot,
  and runs over the mossy mound. Blackbirds cross
  of their black flight evening walk, and the suns
  stay longer with us. Ah! he does
  good to see the Spring surrounded by grass, in all
  the joy that the sight of this smiling greenery gives him,

  dance over the hedges, until the day
  precocious rose (that charming remorse of the thorny
  eglantine) bursts its emerald scabbard, and
  spread out the little disc shivering with golden flame,
  so well known to bees, because in its wake are shown
  pale sagebrush, purple carnations and asphodels
  in full bloom.

  So the sower walks up and down the field
  low, while behind him the laughing kid pushes aside
  with its shrill cries the black troop and plunder
  crows. So the chestnut tree unfolds its full
  glory, and on the grass falls the fragrant stream of
  flowers in shade of cream; languid madrigals,
  whispered in a low voice,

  fly stealthily from the mobile chime of the
  bellflower, with every morning breeze. Then these are
  the jasmine white, which stars its own sky, and the
  flax that sticks out its tongue of fire. The eglantine, dressed
  of powdery velvet, grabs the ground and takes
  the empire of the forest; then, when the late rose
  let it fall,

  one by one the crumpled pieces of his armor,
  when thoughts closed their eyes to lids
  purple, the chrysanthemums land
  their gilded ships their showy goods
  and fragrance-free, and the violets, which have become
  reckless, leave their modest recesses;
  and scarlet berries dot the hawthorn again
  without leaves.

  O happy countryside, O tree thrice happy,
  soon even queen, in a dress embroidered with daisies,
  crowned with lilies, go down to small
  not on the meadow. Soon the lazy herdsmen are going
  again push their herd along the pond.
  Soon, under the green leaves will float at noon
  the muffled hum of bees.

  Soon the clearing will be all shining with mirrors
  of Venus, favorite flower of the daring, and these
  charming nuns, lilies of the valley, with clothes
  snow-white, will string their rosary
  pearls, and crimson carnations, with dark petals
  in the shape of a miter, will perfume the wind; and the
  clematis will hang everywhere in the hedges its
  yellow stars.

  Dear fiancé of Nature, so beneficent Spring,
  you who can multiply the heifer softly
  breath, give the kid its little horns, and
  bring to the vine its tender and silky flowers,
  where is this nepenthes that once man pulled
  from poppy root and mandrake to berries
  shiny?

  There was a time when the most common of birds
  knew how to make me sing in unison with him, a
  time when all the strings of youth vibrated
  to answer without delay, or more melodiously,
  in rhyme, to any idyll of the forest. Am I who
  exchange? Or would there be something changed
  in the happy and charming career?

  No, no, you're still the same: it's me who
  try to disturb your simple loneliness with sighs,
  and because sterile tears wet my
  cheek with dew, I would like to see you cry fraternally
  with me? Foolish! must all my heart
  hurt and worried emboldened to corrupt such
  wine from the bitter poison of his despair?

  You are the same: it's me whose miserable soul
  finds discontent to fall in love with herself
  and surrender his royal power to harsh domination
  of who should serve her as a slave. Because, undoubtedly,
  wisdom exists somewhere, although the
  stormy sea does not conceal it, although the immense
  abyss answers: "It is not in me."

  Burn with one clear flame, stand firm
  according to natural honor, do not bend the knee
  in vain prostrations, which their uselessness condemns:
  what alchemy could teach me?
  What herb worked by Medea will bring me
  peace without exaltation of the being that nothing bends?

  The minor chord which ends the harmony and which
  waits in vain for a fraternal answer, throw a
  sob on his unfinished melody, and dies
  of the death of the swan. So I, the heir to the
  suffering, silent Memnon with eyes without gaze
  and without eyelid, I wait for the light and the
  music of suns that will never rise.

  The torch extinguished, the dark and lonely cypress,
  the little dust collected in a narrow urn,
  the sweet fleshi (Greek word) of the Attic tomb, was it not all
  no better than to return to my capricious and sickly
  fits of agitation from the past, than to pass
  my days in the silent cave of suffering?

  No, because maybe this god crowned with poppies
  is like the guard who, near a sick person's bed,
  talks about sleep, but can not give it.
  His wand has lost its virtue, and frankly a
  word, death is too brutal an answer, a key
  too commonplace to solve a single mystery in the
  philosophy of an existence.

  And Love, this noble madness, whose power
  august, invincible, can kill the soul of its remedies
  honeyed? Alas! I have to play the role of
  runaway, get away from this charming ruin, well
  that a too tenacious memory cannot forget the
  magnificent curve of this Olympian forehead,

  which, in a short season, made my youth a
  ecstasy of so exquisite indolence, that all the scolding
  of the more cautious truth seemed to me
  shrill voice of jealousy! Oh! keep the law out of here,
  huntress more fatal than Artemis, go look for
  some other prey, because your charms too perilous

  my lips have drunk enough! - Never, no never,
  though love in person would turn its cheek
  golden towards the troubled waves of this shore where I have been
  thrown like a wreck by the shipwreck, - in this
  very moment when the wheels of the chariot of passion
  brush against me too closely; far from here! far from here!
  I dedicate myself to a more sterile, more austere life.

  More sterile, yes! these arms will not bend
  more through the trellis of the vines to attract
  my soul despite its gentle resistance, by the greenery
  intertwined. Another head will have this halo
  to wear, because for me I belong to She who
  loves no man, the one whose white breast and
  pure bears the sign of the Gorgon.

  Let Venus go and take the chin of her page
  cute, and tangle her curly hair; than
  provided with the net, the spear and the hunting crew,
  young Adonis blows his horn on his date,
  as for me, her cuddly enchantment,
  subtle maneuvers, no longer charm me, although
  I am in a position to conquer his dearest citadel.

  No, when I would be this laughing young father who lives
  from the top of Ida pass the little cloud over
  Tenedos and Upper Troy, and guessed the coming of
  Queen, and in her admiration, bowed before
  her, - no, not even for a new Helen,
  I wouldn't hold out the apple to his hand.

  Thus, appear, Athene with the arms of silver,
  and if the music doesn't come out of my lips anymore, breathe in
  at least my life. Has not your glory been
  sung in hymns by a man who gave it
  his sword and his lyre, as Aeschylus did
  Marathon fight, and who died to show
  that of Milton's England could still
  to be born a son [7].

[Note 7: Byron.]

  And yet, I cannot go to the Portico,
  and live without desire, fear or suffering,
  and develop in me this calm wisdom, that in one
  long ago, the grave Athenian master taught
  to men, to acquire this voluntary balance,
  concentrated in itself, which finds its comfort in itself,
  in order to see the vain phantasmagoria of the
  world without lowering your head.

  Alas! this serene forehead, these eloquent lips, these
  eyes where the whole of eternity was reflected, all this rests
  in Colonos his homeland; an eclipse has passed over
  wisdom, and Mnemosyne is childless; the
  Minerva's owl has strayed into the darkness
  that she made herself to ensure the safety of her flight
  proud.

  I don't care much about climbing in the company of
  Science, although by a subtle and strange incantation,
  it makes the moon descend from the sky. The
  Muse du Temps deploys its colorful carpet
  sumptuous in front of eyes no less greedy,
  and often, I admit, in the great epic that
  unfolds Polymnie, I like to read

  the pages where we see Asia sending to war
  his myriads of soldiers against a small city, and the
  Mede all armored with golden mail, armed with a
  scimitar adorned with gems, and a white shield,
  plumed in purple, riding between the poplars
  undulating and the sea that men call
  Artemisium, until he saw Thermopylae

  and their arduous parade closed by a narrow wall, and
  on the nearest slopes, a small troop
  of lions taking their carefree antics .-- And
  how he was amazed to see so much boldness,
  and pitched his tent on the reed-strewn shore, and
  remained motionless for two days in astonishment. Then to
  midnight slipped over

  uncrowded height, and descending to
  through the autumn forest, treacherously slaughter
  these beings so dear to Sparta, crown of the distant
  Eurotas, and then resumed his walk, without suspecting
  the fatal trap that God had set for him in
  the narrow bay of Salamis - And yet the lines
  become confused.

  And the cadence of their Greek language does not charm me
  more; I feel too much at odds with that time
  so beautiful to love her very much. Because as well as
  disc of the sundial receives at noon the
  rays of the star, without seeing anything in its blind
  darkness, so my eyes continue without respite
  which eludes my disappointed vision.

  Oh! if there could be only one grandiose being,
  unselfish, simple, teach us what it is
  that wisdom? Speak then, peaks of the lonely
  Helwellyn, cause these melee noises have spread
  of your impassive rocks and your crystalline streams,
  where is this spirit that its irreproachable existence
  did not stop kissing the mouth
  bruised of its own century [8]?

[Note 8: William Wordsworth (1770-1850).]

  Speak then, Laurels of Rydal, where is He
  whose soft forehead you shadowed, where is this
  pure soul who, in his days of gracious majesty
  without a crown, has, despite his humble career,
  achieved the grandiose goal where love and
  duty. He, at least, he knew how to satisfy the
  higher, and he sat down at the feast of Wisdom.

  But we are the bastards of
  Erudition; we know by heart the sound word
  of all Greek schools, and we do not
  no prisons. The Flawless Sword That Cut Down
  the pagan hydra is a weak instrument,
  that we ourselves have blunted. What a man
  nowadays will climb the august, ancient peaks,
  and bow down to venerable Respect?

  It is true, I have known one, but, by Schabod!
  he disappeared, this last and dear son of Italy, who
  being man died for the sake of God, and his
  bones rest in peace [9]. Oh! keep it, keep it well,
  my Tower of Giotto, marble lily in the city of
  lily, do not allow the fierce whims of the
  storm

[Note 9: Mazzini.]

  to torment his sleep, forbidden to the Arno to
  throw its murky yellow waters over its
  edges: never a more powerful winner climbs
  the steps of the Capitol in days gone by, where
  Rome was truly Rome, for freedom walked
  beside him like a bride, and at their sight the
  pale mystery

  fled with a shrill cry to its dark
  cell, and leading an old man who was holding
  rusty keys; fled with a quiver of terror at this
  eternal tocsin which sounds the death knell of oblivion on
  dynasties, and finally he fell as
  the eagle wounded under the gust, when the great triumvir
  penetrated to the sacred heart of Rome.

  He knew the sacred heart and the hills
  from Rome; he tore his filthy wolf from the cave
  lion, and now he lies in death, near
  of this empyrean dome that Brunelleschi suspended
  in the air above the Val d'Arno. O Melpomene,
  make your sweetest melancholy flute sing
  complaint.

  Make sing by the tragic keys of melodies
  such that joy itself can conceive of
  jealousy, and that the Nine forget for a moment their
  modest empire to mourn over him who, for
  resuscitate men, lit in the grandest
  from the sanctuaries of Rome the torch of Marathon,
  and carried the ardor of the sun to the
  forgotten plains of the Sun.

  Oh! keep it well, my Giotto Tower, and that
  every day some young Florentine brings
  crowns of this enchanted flower that
  dark peaks of Vallombrosa, and covers its
  grave where lies the one whose urn is like a
  mighty tree which mortal eyes cannot see,

  a mighty tree which in its wandering cycles would be
  driven by the storm to the end infinitely
  distance where Chaos and Creation merge, where
  wings of cherubim with eternal songs are woven
  of Nothingness, and have penetrated into a void-without
  Moon, - And yet, although it is dust,
  clay,

  He is not dead. The Fates of the Eternal
  memories oppose it, and the scissors abstain
  to close. Lift up your heads, oh poets who will last
  always, and you Argentinian bugles, throw a
  ringing more proud; because the vile thing that was the object
  of his hatred, remains crawling in his dark abode,
  alone with God and memories of sin.

  And even, what good is it for him to have regained his
  cave, to this murderous mother of prostitution
  dressed in purple? In Munich, on the architrave of
  marble, the young Greeks die smiling, but
  the seas that bathe Aegina are agitated in spite of
  to see deserted, and not to reflect their beauty, because
  our lives are stripped of all color,

  lack of our ideals; if a single star is like
  a flaming torch shines in the sky, the unjust light
  of the day kills her without delay, and no war trumpet
  cannot return the voice of passion to silent dust,
  who once was Manzini! The rich Niobe had
  her sons to console herself for the pains she was experiencing
  in its stone, - but Italy!

  On what Easter day will he resurrect his
  children, they who were not God, and nevertheless
  have suffered? Which feet will go without straying up
  their shrouds with multiple folds? What clear eyes
  will see them in flesh and blood. Oh! that he would be
  opportune to scrape the stone from off their sepulcher,
  and kiss the roses bleeding from their wounds,
  for her love,

  of our Italy! our visible mother! Most
  holy among all nations, and saddest,
  for the dear cause of which the young Calabrian
  fell on this day of Aspromonte, the heart
  happy, that in a century when God buys and sells himself,
  a man was found dying for Liberty!
  but we, who are consumed, cooled,

  we see the blown honor and shackles
  to chain the beautiful feet of Pity; poverty
  slips through our sunless streets, and with a knife
  sharp, furtive hand cuts hot throat
  to children. And no one says a word. Oh! we
  are miserable men, unworthy of our
  magnificent heritage. Where is she, the feather

  of the austere Milton? where is she, this powerful
  sword that punishes its master with a just death? The
  years have lost their once leader, and no voice
  do not start from the mute tripod to reach our ears:
  And yet, like a degraded mother,
  gives birth in the middle of a spasm
  a vile child, who inspires him horror, likewise
  our most sincere enthusiasm

  begets illegitimate children, anarchy, which
  plays for Liberty the role of Judas, the vile and licentious
  prodigal who steals the gold of freedom, without
  that yet he has nothing left, Ignorance,
  only true fratricide since Cain, Envy, aspic which
  bruises himself with his bites, Avarice, which
  paralyzed hand

  opens only with stiffness; Crowded Greed
  money, and whose monotonous hunger exhausts
  men, in the midst of the tumult of the wheels. Those are
  there the seeds of things that will destroy their
  sower. This is what each day sees maturing in
  England, and the gentle steps of Beauty do not tread
  plus the stones of any of the ugly streets.

  What Cromwell himself had spared is
  desecrated by weeds and worms, abandoned
  to the tumultuous games of wind and gusts
  of snow, or is restored by more hands
  murderous again. The worst degradation that the
  Time; he sailed with some grace, but these modern
  scandals can only do waterproof nudity
  in the rain.

  Where is this Art that invited Angels to come
  sing under the high vaults of the choir at Lincoln.
  So much so that the air seems to borrow from such harmonies
  of marble, a softness that human lips
  don't hope to get real reed? Ah!
  where is this skillful hand which knew how to bend
  flowering branches of hawthorn,

  for the Southwell Arch, and sculpted the house
  of the one who loved the fields with all our most
  charming English flowers? The same sun is
  rise for us; the natural seasons weave the
  same carpet of green and gray; the hills have
  kept their appearance among us, but that Spirit has
  faded away.

  And maybe it is better that it be so.
  Because Tyranny is an incestuous queen, she has
  for brother and as a bedmate the
  Murder, and the Plague dwells with it; his treacherous steps
  come and go by unclean paths and
  bloody. Better an empty desert and a soul
  inviolate.

  For a noble brotherhood, the harmony of life
  which moves in pure air, agile and pure beauty
  strong limbs in free men, and
  chaste women, these things uplift our souls
  higher than the skinny blind man can
  Sibylle d'Agnelo, bending over the book of sorrows
  human,

  or that the little girl that Titian represents
  white on a staircase, near her bed, charming,
  that she equals in height, or that Mona Lisa smiling
  through her hair. Ah! whatever we think, life
  is, after all, vaster than any angel
  painted, if we were able to see the God who is
  within us. The Greek serenity of yesteryear,

  who masters passion, or that straight line
  among the marble virgins, which one sees, without disturbance
  in the eyes, without agitation in the limbs,
  ride around the Temple of Athene, and
  reflect the divine ordinances, and this exact symmetry
  of all the things that in man are
  would otherwise wage incessant battles, - all
  at least in the meantime,

  which extends from maternal kisses to the grave,
  this is probably what govern our lives, and
  to secure us an empire powerful enough for the
  temptation becomes hoarse to call from the depths of one's cave,
  so that the pale Sin walks bent under the
  ashamed of his adulteries, so that the Passion,
  leaving the pleasure house, open your eyes
  bewildered.

  Make the body and the Spirit one and the same
  with all that is right, so that nothing lives
  in vain, from morning until noon, but that in one
  sweet unison, besides every pulse of the flesh and
  every throbbing of the brain, the soul, still perfect,
  resides on a throne defended by impregnable
  bastions against all the vain attacks of
  outside,

  And that she observes, with serene impartiality,
  the melee of things, and nevertheless draws comfort from it,
  knowing that by the chain of causality
  are married all different things, that he
  the result is a supreme whole, whose language is the
  joy or a more holy hymn! Ah! certainly it would be
  there is a way of governing

  life in the most august omnipresence, and
  through this, the reasoned intellect would find in
  passion its expression; the pure senses, which otherwise
  are vile, would communicate the flame
  in mind, and the whole would form a more harmonious
  mystical than that with which the planetary stars are united

  and their various tones would make an octave string,
  whose cadence being limitless, would spread to
  through the orbs of all the spheres, and from there
  until their Master would return, strengthened by his
  new power, endowed with a more efficient power.
  --Ah! really, if we could only
  achieve this, we would have found the last, the
  supreme credo.

  Ah! it was easy when the world was
  young, than to keep his life away from the constraints
  and defilements. On our sad lips vibrated a
  different song; we took off our crown
  with our own hands, to wander among the
  sufferings of exile; and dispossessed that we
  are of what belongs to us, we
  can know no other food than agitation
  without truce.

  In short, grace, the flower of things, has
  dissipated, and of all men we are the
  more miserable, we who have to live the life one
  on the other and never the one that belongs to us in
  clean, and that out of pure pity, with the trouble of undoing
  then; it was different at the time when soul and
  bodies seemed to merge into mystics
  symphonies.

  But we have deserted these charming refuges,
  to undertake the journey of the
  new Calvary, where we contemplate, as
  the one who sees his own face in a mirror, Humanity
  killing herself, where in the reproach
  silent with this sad look, we learn what a terrible
  ghost can bring out the reddened hand of
  the man.

  O bruised mouth! O forehead crowned with thorns!
  O chalice full of all common miseries!
  You, you have for the love of us who do not have you
  point loved, you endured prolonged agony
  for endless centuries. And us us
  were vain, ignorant, and we did not know
  that the stab, carried by us to your
  heart, fatally reached ours.

  For we were both the sowers and the seeds,
  the night which envelops, and the day which darkens,
  the piercing lance and the bleeding flank,
  the lips that betray, and the life that is betrayed;
  the abyss has calm, the moon has rest, but we
  masters of the natural world, we "are
  still our formidable enemy.

  Is this the end of all this primitive force,
  which remains the same under the various changes,
  came out of blind chaos by violence, for
  to climb higher and higher, across seas
  hungry and whirlwinds of rocks and
  flames, until the suns were grouped together
  in the sky, to begin their cycles,
  until the morning stars sang and
  that the Word became man?

  No, no, we're only crucified, well
  that from our eyebrows fall like a rain, the
  sweat of blood, tear out the nails, and we will descend,
  I know it! That the
  red wounds, and we will regain our integrity!
  We don't need the hyssop offered
  at the end of a reed. What is purely human,
  is also divine in nature, is also God.




SONNET FOR FREEDOM

  It is not that I love children, whose
  dull eyes see nothing but their misery
  without nobility, whose spirits do not know
  nothing, do not care to know anything, but because
  the roar of your Democracies,

  your Reigns of Terror, the great Anarchies,
  reflect my most passionate passions like the sea
  fiery, and give my rage a brother, - Freedom!
  For this only, your discordant cries

  enchant my soul to its depths,
  without it all kings could, by means of
  bloodied knout and treacherous machine guns,
  strip nations of their inviolable rights,

  that I would stay without being moved. And yet ...
  and yet these Christs, who die on the barricades,
  God knows if I'm with them on some
  points.



AVE, IMPERATRIX

  Fixed in this stormy North Sea, queen
  of these restless plains raised by the tide,
  England, what will men say about law, before
  which the worlds share.

  The earth, a fragile glass globe, fits in the
  the hollow of your hand, and through her crystal heart
  pass, like shadows through a twilight region,

  the spears of war with their crimson garment,
  the long waves plumed with white, the
  battle, and all those flames that sow death,
  the torches of the lords, of the Night.

  The poor leopards, skinny and thin, that
  Knows the treacherous Russia so well, we see them
  opening wide their blackened mouths and leaping
  through the hail of howling bombs.

  The sturdy sea lion of the wars of England
  left his sapphire cave in the ocean, for
  fight against the storm that makes the star of the
  English chivalry.

  The bronze-throated bugle echoes through the
  moors and rushes of the Palhan, and the steep slopes
  of the snows of India shake under the footsteps of
  armed men.

  And more than an Afghan chef, lying in the cool
  of his grenadiers, clasps his sword in his hand,
  when he felt fierce suspicion arise in him, as soon as he
  sees on the mountain slope

  the Marri, scout with an agile foot, who comes to him
  to learn that he heard the rolling in the distance
  rhythmic English drums resonating with
  Gates of Kandahar.

  'Cause the south wind and the east wind come together
  to the place where, surrounded and crowned with iron and
  fire, England, bare and bloody feet,
  ascends the steep road of a vast empire.

  O lonely peak of the Himalayas, gray pillar of the sky
  Indian, where was the last time you saw in the fray
  resounding, our winged dogs that Victory leads?

  Near the almond groves of Samarkand in
  Bokhara, where reds flourish, and worms
  the Oxus with yellow sand where the gravel goes
  merchants with white turbans,

  And from there on the way to Isfahan, the golden garden of
  sun, from where the long and powdery caravan brings
  cedar and vermilion;

  And this formidable city of Caboul, posed in
  feet of the steep mountain, whose basins of
  marble are always full of water to fight
  the heat of noon:

  Where we walk, by the narrow and straight alley
  du Bazar, a very young Circassian, present
  send the Czar to some old bearded Khan,

  There our fiery war eagles flew, there they
  have flapped their wings in the bitter battle, but the
  saddened dove, which dwells in solitude in England,
  has no fun.

  In vain the laughing girl bends down to answer
  to his love with his eyes that light up
  love, over there in some black and full ravine
  pitfalls, lies the young man clutching his flag.

  And many moons, many suns will see the
  children languishing in waiting spying on the moment
  to climb on the knees of the father, and in each
  dwelling where desolation will have entered,

  Pale wives, who will have lost their master
  and lord, will kiss the relics of the deceased, - some
  tarnished epaulet, a sword, - poor
  toys to relieve such painful anguish,

  Because it is not in the peaceful countryside
  of England that these men, our brothers, have
  been deposited on the daybed, where we could
  cover their broken shields with all the flowers
  preferred by the dead.

  There are some of them who lie near the
  walls of Delhi, many others in the Afghan land,
  and many in the country where the Ganges flows
  for seven months on moving sands.

  And others lie in the Russian seas, and
  others in the seas which are the gates of
  the Orient, or near the heights of Trafalgar
  that the wind sweeps away.

  O wandering tombs, oh restless sleep, oh silence
  of the day without sun! o quiet ravine, o
  stormy depth, return your prey! return
  your prey!

  And you, whose wounds never heal,
  you who never reach the end of the
  painful race, O Cromwell's England, must we
  that you pay one of your sons every inch of
  Earth?

  Goes! Crown of thorns your head adorned with a crown
  Golden. May your song of joy give way to
  song of suffering. The wind and the furious wave
  took it from your dead, and they will never give it back to you.

  The wave, the furious wind, the foreign shore
  possess the flower of the English earth, - these lips
  that lips will never kiss again, those hands
  who will never shake your hand.

  And now what have we gained by enclosing
  the entire terrestrial globe in threads of gold, if we
  find hidden in our heart the concern that does not
  ever get old?

  What good is it for us that our galleys cover,
  like a pine forest, any part of the sea?
  Ruin and shipwreck are by our side, fierce
  guardians of the House of Sorrows.

  Where are the brave, the strong, the rapids? Where is
  our English knighthood? Wild herbs their
  serve as a shroud, and the sob of the waves is their
  funeral complaint.

  O beloved who lie far away, what a word of affection
  can send dead lips? O dust
  lost, O insensible clay! Is it to end,
  is it to end thus?

  Peace! Peace! it is to offend the noble dead that
  to torment their solemn sleep in this way. Although
  deprived of her children, and her head crowned with thorns,
  England must climb the steep road.

  And yet, when this painful mound is finished,
  its watchmen will signal the young Republic from afar
  like a sun that rises from the purple seas
  of the war.





IN MILTON

  Milton, it seems to me that your mind has withdrawn
  far from these white cliffs, these high
  crenellated towers; this world of sumptuous and ardent
  colors, ours, seems to have fallen into
  dull and gray ashes,

  it looks like the century has turned into a pantomime
  where we waste our busy hours
  many other tasks. Because, with all our pomp
  and our luxury, and our powers, we are not
  hardly fit for digging the banal clay,

  since this small island that we occupy, this
  England, this marine lion of the sea, is in the pay
  ignorant demagogues,

  who do not love him. Good god, is it really there
  this country which carried in its hand a triple empire,
  when Cromwell had uttered the word Democracy?




LOUIS-NAPOLEON

  Eagle of Austerlitz, where were your wings when,
  exiled far away on a barbaric shore, after a
  unequal struggle, under the blows of a stranger, fell
  the last offspring of your race of kings?

  Poor child! you will no longer parade in your
  red coat, you will not ride big
  pump through Paris, at the head of your returned legions,
  but on the other hand, your mother, France, free
  and republican,

  will lay on your pale, crownless forehead the
  most glorious laurels of the warrior crown,
  so that your soul can go there without dishonor
  tell the mighty author of your race

  that France has kissed the lips of Liberty, and
  found them sweeter than the honey of his bees
  to him, and that Democracy, giant wave, breaks
  on the shores where kings rested carefree.




SONNET ON THE MASSACRE OF CHRISTIANS IN BULGARIA

  Christ, have you really expired? Or
  well do your bones lie in their sepulcher carved in
  the rock. And was your Resurrection just the dream
  of her whose sins deserve forgiveness by this
  alone that she loved you so much?

  For here the air is filled with horrible complaints
  men, and the priests who invoke
  your name. Don't you hear the lamentations
  painful of those whose children lie
  on stone?

  Come down, O Son of God, an incestuous night
  veil the earth, and through the starless night I
  see the lunar crescent dominating your cross.

  If it is true that you have broken down the barriers of
  the grave, come down, O Son of man, and show
  your power, lest you be crowned in your place
  Mohammed.




QUANTUM MUTATA

  There was a long time in Europe when
  nowhere did no man die for freedom
  without the Lion of England, emerging from a
  leap from his cave did not lay his hand on the oppressor!
  It was then

  that England was in a position to be Great
  Republic, witness the men of Piedmont, objects
  favorite of Cromwell's worries, while in
  his palace with frescoes, the Pontiff, in a powerless
  despair,

  trembled before our inexorable ambassadors.
  How then is it that we are fallen
  of such magnitude, if not because the
  luxury

  clutters with its waste rock produced the door through which
  noble thoughts, noble deeds would enter. Without
  that we could still be Milton's heirs.





LIBERTATIS SACRA FAMES

  Although I was nurtured in Democracy, and
  that I prefer to all this republican state, where every
  man is like a king, where no one is distinguished
  others by a crown, despite everything,

  despite this modern itch of Liberty,
  I prefer the government of one, to which all
  obey, that of those bawling demagogues who
  betray our independence by the kisses they
  give to anarchy.

  So I have no sympathy for those whose
  sacrilegious hands plant the red flag on
  the barricades of the streets, without defending a just
  cause, and which would establish the reign of ignorance:

  So, arts, civilization, politeness, honor, everything
  would vanish, there would be only treason, and the
  dagger which is his only tool, and murder with
  silent and bloody feet.




THEORETIKOS

  This mighty empire has only feet of clay.
  All chivalry, all power have given up
  entirely our little island. Some enemy has stolen
  his laurel wreath,

  and among its hills was silent this voice that spoke
  of freedom. Oh! leave her, my soul, leave her;
  you're not made to live in this vile dwelling
  of traffickers, where every day

  wisdom and respect are put on public sale,
  where the rude people utter furious cries
  of ignorance against what is the legacy of centuries.

  It disturbs my calm; also my desire is to
  isolate myself in dreams of art and supreme culture,
  without taking sides either for God or for his enemies.




REQUIESCAT

  Walking with a light step, she is very close, under the
  snow. Speak in a low voice: she can hear grow
  daisies.

  All her beautiful golden hair has taken on the shade of
  rust; she who was young, and charming, she
  is just dust.

  Like a lily, white as snow, she knew
  hardly she was a woman so gently she
  had grown up.

  The planks of the coffin, a heavy stone weighs
  on his chest; alone I torture my heart,
  but she rests.

  Silence! Silence! she couldn't hear the lyre
  nor the sonnet; my whole life is buried here. Pile up
  earth on top of it.

_Avignon_.





SONNET COMPOSED APPROACHING ITALY

  I reached the Alps, my soul was burning inside me,
  in your name, Italy, Italy. And when I came out of the heart
  of the mountain, and that I saw the land that had been
  the desire of my life,

  I laughed like a man who won
  a high value prize; and dreaming about the story of
  your glory, I watched the day, until the moment when,
  streaked with inflamed wounds, the turquoise sky
  gradually took on the color of polished gold.

  The pines floated like a hair floats
  woman, and in the orchards, all the maze of
  branches bloomed in flakes of flowery foam.

  But when I learned that far from it, in
  Rome, a second Peter wore fatal chains,
  I wept to see such a beautiful land.

_Turin_.





SAN MINIATO

  You see I climbed the slope of the mountain
  to that holy house of God, where once went
  and came the angelic painter, who saw the heavens widely
  open,

  and on a throne above the crescent of the
  moon, the white and virginal Queen of grace. Married!
  If I could only see your face, death
  would never come too soon.

  O thou whom God crowned with thorns and sorrows!
  Mother of Christ! O mystical bride! My heart is
  weary of this life, and too overwhelmed with sadness to
  sing again.

  O you, whom God crowned with love and flame,
  that Christ crowned, the most holy; Oh! listen,
  before the merciless sun exposes to the universe
  my sin and my shame.




AVE, MARIA, GRATIA PLENA

  Is this how he came? I expected to see
  a scene of marvelous brilliance, as it is
  tale about a God who, in a golden shower,
  knocked down the barriers and went down to Danae:

  or to a terrible apparition, like when
  Sémélè, languishing with love and unfulfilled desire,
  begged to see the luminous body of God, and that
  the flame seizes his white limbs and destroys him entirely.

  It was with these happy dreams that I visited this place
  sacred, and now eyes and heart full
  of astonishment, I remain motionless in front of this supreme
  mystery of love,

  a young girl on her knees, her face pale and without
  passion, an angel holding a lily in his hand, and above
  of them, the dove, spreading its wings.

_Florence_.






ITALIA

  Italy! you are fallen, although all bristling with
  shining spears, your armies march with great crash
  from the Northern Alps to the Sicilian waves!
  Yes, fallen, though the nations hail you queen,

  because we see the gold shine your wealth
  in all the cities, and that on your sapphire lake,
  with an allied air, under the wind which swells their sails,
  your galleys sail by thousands, under the unique
  red, white and green flag.

  Beautiful and strong! But beautiful and strong in vain! Door
  your gaze to the south, where Rome, a profaned city,
  waits in mourning garment for a king anointed by God.

  Raise your gaze to the sky; Will God allow a
  such thing? No, but some Raphael surrounded by
  flame will descend, and strike the Defiler
  with the sword of retribution.





SONNET WRITTEN DURING HOLY WEEK IN GENOA

  I wandered into Scoglietto's green retreat. The
  oranges on all the branches that formed the vault,
  were hanging like shining lamps
  of gold, to shame the day. Here and there a bird
  surprised, with his flapping wings and his feet

  scattered all the flowers like snow.
  At my feet, pale daffodils like moons
  silver; and the rounded waves that lined the
  sapphire berry, laughed in the sun, and life seemed
  very sweet.

  Outside, the young altar boy was passing
  singing in a clear voice: "Jesus, the son of
  Marie, was put to death. Oh! come and cover with
  flowers her tomb. "

  Ah! God! Ah! God! those lovely hours
  Hellenic have submerged all memories of your bitter
  Sorrows, Cross, Crown, Soldiers
  and the Lance.




ROME THAT I DIDN'T VISIT

I

  Wheat has turned from gray to red, since for
  the first time my mind fled the bleak cities
  from the North, to fly to the mountains of Italy.

  And now I turn to the fireplace side
  domestic, because my pilgrimage is completely finished,
  although, it seems to me, this sun, red
  like blood, show me the road that leads to
  Rome the saint.

  O blessed Lady, who have under your empire the seven
  hills, O Mother without spot or stain, you who
  wear a triple crown of gold,

  O Roma, Roma, I lay this vain at your feet
  tribute of my song, for, alas! she is rude and
  long, the road which leads to the Sacred Way.

II

  And yet, what a joy it would be for me that
  to turn my steps towards the South, after having followed the
  Tiber to its mouth, to come back to kneel
  in Fiesole

  and wander through the thick pine forest, which
  interrupts the course of the Arno with golden reflections, to
  see the crimson fog and the morning glow
  on the Apennines,

  passing near many houses buried among
  the vines, near the orchard, near the olive garden
  gray, until finally from the top of the road that
  crosses the hill Campagna, appear the seven
  hills that carry the Dome.

III

  For me, pilgrim of the North Seas, what a joy
  to put myself alone in search of the temple
  wonderful and from the throne of Him who holds the keys
  formidable.

  While all shining purple and gold, pass by
  and priests and holy cardinals, and that carried above
  of all heads, arrives the sweet pastor of
  herd.

  What a joy to see, before I die, the only one
  king who is anointed by God, and to hear the trumpets
  silver ringing triumphantly in its path.

  Or when at the altar of the sanctuary he raises the
  sign of the mysterious sacrifice and shows to the eyes
  mortals a God under the veil of bread and wine.

IV

  Because what changes does time bring
  not? The cycles of the coming years may
  deliver my heart from its fears and learn to
  my lips a song they could sing.

  Before in this field of down, the quivering gold
  is gathered in powder sheaves, before the
  scarlet leaves of autumn flutter like
  birds to fall on the grass,

  I might have walked the glorious career
  and seized the still flaming torch, and summoned the
  sacred name of the One who now hides his face.




URBS SACRA AND AETERNA

  Rome! what page in history was yours,
  in the old days when your republican sword
  rule the whole world, for a period of good
  centuries! So you were the crowned queen of your
  peoples,

  until the day when the Goth appeared in your streets
  bearded. And today, O city crowned by God,
  uncrown by man, it is the odious flag
  red, white and green that the breezes float on
  your walls.

  When were you in your glory? While your
  power-hungry eagles took flight to greet
  the double sun and the nations trembled
  under your scepter?

  No, your glory has lasted until this day, when
  the pilgrims kneel before, the only Saint,
  the captive pastor of the Church of God.




SONNET COMPOSED AFTER THE _DIES IRAE_ HEARING

_SHANTED IN THE SIXTINE CHAPEL_

  No, Lord, it is not so. The whiteness
  from the lily in spring, the melancholy olive groves
  where the silver-breasted dove teach me
  more clearly your life and your love, than
  these red flames and thunderclaps, with
  their terrors.

  The purple vines bring me sweetness
  memories of you: a bird that comes home in the evening
  wing towards his nest, tells me about the one who has no
  place to rest. I imagine it's on you
  that the sparrow sings.

  Rather come on an autumn evening, when the
  red and brown glow on the leaves and the
  campaigns repeat like an echo the song of the
  ferryman.

  Come when the full moon in its splendor leaves
  to fall his gaze on the rows of golden wreaths,
  and then make your harvest; we have waited a long time.




EASTER

  The silver trumpets sounded under the
  Dome, the people with religious respect knelt
  on the ground, and I saw carried on the shoulders of
  men, like some great deity, the holy
  Master of Rome.

  Like a priest he wore a whiter robe
  that scum; like a king, he was surrounded by purple
  royal. Three crowns of gold soared high
  on his head. Surrounded by splendor and light, the
  Pope returned home.

  My heart is running far into the past, through
  the desert of years, towards a man who wandered
  at the edge of a lonely sea, and sought in vain
  a place to rest.

  "Foxes have their den, and every bird
  has its nest, and I, I alone, must wander without
  rest, bruised feet, and drink with the wine
  the bitterness of tears. "



E TENEBRIS

  Come down, O Christ, and come to my aid! Hold me out
  hand, because I'm going to drown in a sea
  stormier than your lake of
  Galileo. The wine of life is poured out on the table.

  My heart is like a land ravaged by your
  famine and where all useful things perished. And I
  know very well that my soul is destined for Hell,
  if I have to appear before the throne tonight
  of God.

  "He may be asleep, or he is riding a horse to
  hunting, like Baal, when his prophets howled
  his name, from dawn to midday, on the blasted peak
  of Carmel. "

  No, let's be quiet, before the night comes, I will contemplate
  bronze feet, whiter dress
  that the flame, the bruised hands, and the imprinted face
  quite human weariness.




VITA NUOVA

  I was standing by the sea where no one grapes,
  until the wet waves had covered
  my face and my hair with their foam; the long ones
  red flames of dying day burned in the west;
  the wind had a sad whistle

  and the screaming seagulls fled to land:
  "Alas! I cried, my life is full of pain;
  and who therefore can stock up on fruit or
  golden grain on these barren plains which are constantly agitated? "

  My nets had this and a lot of large tears,
  many slits; nevertheless I threw them to
  try my last chance, in the sea, and I waited
  the end.

  When! oh surprise! what sudden glory! And I
  live up the silvery splendor of a body with
  white limbs, and this joy made me forget the
  torments of the past.




MADONNA MIA

  Young girl and lily, she was not made for
  pain of this world, with her brown hair and
  sweet that her tears stuck in braids, with her
  eyes full of desire, half veiled by tears
  still asleep, like very blue waters that
  sees through the mist of the rain;

  pale cheeks, where no love had left its
  stain, his lower lip red, and brought in
  to run away from love, and a white throat, more
  white as the silver dove, and whose marble
  pale was streaked with a purple vein. And yet,
  although my lips must not stop
  to rent,

  I wouldn't be bold enough to fuck him
  even the feet, because I feel under the shadow that
  make the wings of respect,

  as well as Dante, when he was standing with Beatrice,
  under the fiery breast of the Lion, and that he
  saw the seventh crystal sky and the golden staircase.




THE SONG OF ITES

  The English Thames is much holier than
  Rome. These campanulas, which like a climb
  sudden sea, come to invade the groves,
  with, for foam, the meadowsweet and the white
  anemone to speckle the blue waves, - God
  is more evident here than where it is hidden, in
  the star with the crystal heart that a monk wears
  pale.

  These butterflies with purple reflections that take
  for tent this lily in the shade of cream, they are
  monsignori, and where the reeds stir, where a
  lazy pike floats in the sun, eyes
  half closed, - here is an old bishop miter, _in partibus_.
  Look at these shining scales all green
  and gold.

  The wind, prisoner restlessly agitating in
  trees, play the Palestrina very well. It looks like
  that the fingers of the mighty maestro are resting on
  the keys of Maria's organ, and let them play it,
  when, in the early hours of a blue morning
  Easter, the Pope, carried on a red stretcher
  like blood or crime, go

  from his dark abode on the balcony above
  bronze doors, and, dominating the crowded crowd
  on the square, where the fountains themselves seem
  in their ecstasy throw their silver spears in the air,
  stretch out his weak hands to the east, to the west,
  send a vain peace to countries that do not know
  no peace, rest to the nations that
  not know the rest.

  And this orange radiance that lingers and seems
  want to tease the moon, isn't he prettier than
  the most brilliant pumps in Rome! Thing
  strange! a year ago i knelt in front
  I do not know which cardinal in a red robe, who wore
  the Host through the Esquiline! ... and now these
  vulgar poppies among the wheat seem to me two
  times as beautiful.

  These fields of peas, blue green, here over there,
  shivering from the last downpour, emit
  this fresh evening perfumes sweeter than those
  censers adorned with flaming gems that
  sway the young deacons, when the old priest
  open the tabernacle veiled with curtains, and give
  God a body made with the banal fruit of wheat and
  Vine.

  Poor Brother Giovanni, who bawls at mass,
  would certainly be surprised here, because up there sings a
  little brown bird, and through the long, cool grass
  I see that throbbing throat that I once heard on
  the starlit hills in Arcadia
  starry of flowers, where the white sand semicircle
  from Salamis beach joins the sea.

  Charming is the swallow that babbles on the roofs,
  at daybreak, when the reaper sharpens the
  false, when the doves moan, and the milkmaid,
  leaving his lonely little bed, go light, and
  humming to the herd with its deep howls,
  who waits, and walks over the doors
  of the courtyard, its vast muzzles overflowing with foam.

  And they are charming the hops on the plains
  of Kent, and sweet is the wind that stirs the fresh hay
  cut, and gentle are the wayward swarms
  buzzing bees, and sweet is the heifer
  blowing in the stable, and the green figs near
  to burst, hanging over the brick wall
  red.

  And it's sweet to hear the cuckoo mock the
  spring, as the last violets stroll
  still close to the source, and it's sweet to hear
  the shepherd Daphnis sing the song of Linus
  in some sunny valley of warm Arcadia
  where the wheat is gold, where the reapers
  light and slender limbs dance near the herd
  locked in the park.

  And it's sweet to hear beside the young Lycoris
  in some distant valley of Illyria, and
  under a canopy of foliage on a carpet of amaracus,
  we too could lose in ecstasy a
  summer day, and entertain us who will be the most skillful
  on the blowtorch, while far below
  against us, the troubled purple of the sea is angry.

  But how much sweeter it would be if the foot
  shod in some god long silver sandals
  hidden never came to tread the meadows of
  Nuneham; if ever Fauna bringing to his lips the
  reed flute could raise its head near the green ones
  flasks of water! Ah! it would be sweet, indeed, to see
  the celestial shepherd calling his flock to pasture
  the white fleece.

  So sing for me, harmonious musician,
  although you only sing, after all, your
  own _requiem_. Tell me your story, unfortunate chronicler,
  tell me your tragedies. Do not disdain
  these new retreats for you, this English countryside,
  because our North Island can give enough
  make many beautiful wreaths,

  that the Greek prairies do not know;
  more than a rose such as vainly a teenager
  would look for her for a whole day, in the valleys
  Eolie, grows in dense masses on our hedges,
  like a carefree courtesan lavish of her
  beauty; and also lilies such as never thinks
  the Ilissus star our streams, and blue nielles

  punctuate the green wheat, and although they are
  for the swallows a warning to steer
  to the south, they would never unfurl their flags
  azure among the Greek vines. And even
  this little grass in red rags, which invites the
  piping robin, would be a stranger in Arcadia,
  and more than one elegy remained silent

  sleeps in the reeds that fringe our winding
  Thames, and who would wake her, would give an enchantment
  sweeter than the one that made Syrinx cry,
  and here hide sown brown orchids
  bees, beautiful enough to make a tiara
  front of Kythera, and that Kythera
  point, and over there close to that grazing bull,

  he's a cute yellow asphodel; the butterfly
  can see it from afar, although the dew of a
  one summer evening is enough to fill its little one twice
  cut, before the star called the lazy shepherd
  to his park, and without being lavish, each
  petal is strewn with golden spots

  as if the opulent mistress of Jupiter, Danae,
  still burning hot from his golden arms, had
  bent over to kiss the trembling petals, or
  as if the young Mercury, who flies the
  dark ford of Dis, had grazed them recently
  with a feather from its wings; the slender rod that carries the
  charge of its suns

  is barely thicker than the Virgo thread, or
  than poor Arachne's silver tapestry.
  Men say she blooms on the tomb
  of a being to whom I once worshiped, but
  to me she seems to bring back memories more
  divine heliconian shades haunted by Fauns
  and blue seas loved by nymphs

  from an unknown valley to Tempé, where Narcissus stretches
  on the edge of a transparent river, having in its
  hair the disorder of the forest, in his eyes the
  silence of the woods, courting this moving image which
  barely fucked dissolves; memories of Salmacis,

  who is neither a young man nor a young girl, and who
  is however both, ablaze with a double
  flame, and never satisfied by their very excess,
  because each of the two passions, in its ardor
  in love, refuses to separate from the other, and yet
  kill love by this refusal; - memories of oréades
  peering through the leaves of the silent trees
  under the moonlight,

  of Ariadne abandoned in the port of Naxos, when she
  the perfidious crew lives far away on the waves,
  that she waved her red scarf, and called the
  deceiver Theseus, unaware that very close behind
  she was Dionysus on a colored panther
  amber, - memories of what lives

  the blind bard of Meonia, the wall of Troy, the
  Queen Helena seated in the sculpted chamber, having
  next to her a young man in love with lips
  reds arranging the mane with his cute hand
  of his helmet, and far from it, the melee, the cries,
  complaints, when Hector spread with his shield
  the spear and Ajax threw the stone,

  Or it's winged Perseus, who, with his hardened sword,
  slice the witch's entwined snakes, this
  are all these tales fixed for eternity on the small
  Greek ballot box, load richer than the
  was the most opulent galleon in Spain on his return
  from India. Because at least from this load it happens
  some part

  and I know very well that they are not at all
  dead, the ancient Gods of Greek poetry; they
  are only asleep, and as soon as they hear your
  call, they will wake up, and believe they are in the middle of
  Thessaly. This Thames will be their water from Daulis,
  this fresh clearing the meadow strewn with yellow irises
  where the young Itys used to laugh and play.

  If it was you, dear bird, who made your cradle
  in the jasmine, if it was you, who of the still
  foliage of your throne, sang for the wonderful
  child until he heard Atalante's horn
  ringing faintly among the hills of Cumner,
  and that in his wandering races through the woods of
  Bagley, he met, in the evening, the fountain of poets
  greek,

  Ah! cute avocado in simple costume, who
  pleads for the moon against the day, if it is thanks to
  you that the shepherd seeks his companion, in that
  sweet pursuit, while Proserpine forgot that she
  was not in Sicily, and that she leaned, all
  amazed, against this mossy barrier of Sandfort,

  Prodigy of wood, with a light wing, with eyes
  shining, if you ever comforted by your melody
  someone from this little clan, from this fraternal troop
  who loved the morning star of Tuscany,
  more than Raphael's accomplished sun, and who is
  immortal, sing for me, because I like her,

  sing, sing again! May the gloomy universe become again
  young, that the elements take
  new forms, and that the ancient forms of
  Beauty walk among the simple forms,
  among the small fields without barriers, as in
  time when the son of Latona carried the staff of
  willow, where the fluffy sheep and the ruffled goats
  followed the almost child God.

  Sing, sing again! and Bacchus will appear
  here, astride his magnificent Indian throne, and
  above the whining tigers, he will wave his stick
  crowned with yellow ivy and a cone cone,
  while beside him the brazen Bassaride will throw
  the lion on the ground by its mane, and will catch the
  mountain fawn.

  Sing again! and I will wear leopard skin,
  and I will steal the lunar wings of Astaroth, and on
  his icy cart we will be able to reach Citheron
  in an hour, before the foam overflowed overhead
  the press, before the Fauna has ceased to
  tread the bunches; yes, before the flashing light
  of the day

  scared the screaming tawny away to its nest,
  and warned the bat to fold its fans
  membranous, some young Maenad, with breasts
  covered with vine leaves, maraudera aux Pans
  sleep their berry fruits, so gently that the
  little starling will not wake up in its nest and
  immediately uttering a shrill laugh, and darting out
  jump,

  she will reach the green valley, where the dew has fallen
  gathers under the elm, and then will count his booty;
  then the brown satyrs, merry band, will tread
  lysimachia along the shore, and where their
  horned master throne in great device, will bring
  strawberries and downy plums on a rack
  of wicker.

  Sing again! and soon, the face tired by the
  passion, will appear through the fresh searched the
  young man servant of Apollo. The tyrian prince
  will chase his bristling boar, will roam the woods of
  chestnut trees all in bloom, and the virgin to the limbs
  of ivory, with gray eyes, where pride shines, will continue
  on horseback the suede clad in velvet.

  Sing again! and i will see the young boy dying
  to dye the bell with your blood purple
  of wax, the weight of which tilts the hyacinth, and
  I weeping Cypris will come and tell her pain, and I
  kiss her mouth and her streaming eyes, and I
  lead her to the mysterious grove of myrtles where
  lies Adonis.

  Redouble your efforts, O Itys! The memory, brother of
  milk of remorse and pain, pour drip
  drop the poison in my ear. Oh! be free!
  Burn his old ships! Getting started again
  the melee of the White Plumed Waves, and deliver
  battle at old Proteus to plunder the caves
  flowered with coral!

  Oh! for Medea and her magical parents! for
  the secret of the Sanctuary of Colchis! Oh! for a
  leaf of this pale asphodel that surrounds the forehead
  weary of Proserpina, and pour so wonderful dews in the evening,
  that she dreams of Enna's campaigns, near
  from the distant sea of ​​Sicily,

  where she often chased the bee on the belt
  of gold, from lily to lily, in the plain meadow, before
  his dark master would have made him taste the fruit
  fatal, to this pomegranate, before the blacks
  couriers would have taken her far away, even in
  the vague land without flowers, in the languid day and
  without sun.

  Oh! for a midnight hour, to have for mistress
  the Venus of the small farm of Mélos! Oh! if
  for an hour only some ancient statue
  awakened to passion; and that I could make you forget
  to Dawn of Florence her mute despair, to cling to me
  to these powerful members and make my pillow of
  that giant breast!

  Sing, sing again! I would like to be drunk on
  life, drunk with the vintage trampled under the press,
  my youth; I would forget the struggles of labor
  barren, the torn valley, the Gorgon eyes of the
  Truth, the vigil without prayer, and the cry that implores
  prayer, fruitless gifts, arms raised, air
  bleak and insensitive.

  Sing, sing again! O feathered Niobe, you
  can give beauty to pain, and steal
  to joy its most melodious accents, while
  we have nothing but dead silence and
  speechless to heal our too uncovered wounds,
  and only know how to keep suffering imprisoned
  in our hearts, that kill sleep on the pillow.

  Sing even louder, why do I have to
  see again the weary and pale face of this abandoned Christ,
  whose bloody hands once held my hands,
  whose lips have so often kissed the lips
  bruised, and who now mute, miserable in
  his marble, remains alone in his dishonored dwelling,
  and cry, over me maybe.

  O memory, strip your garlanded envelope,
  break your hoarse lute, oh sad Melpomene;
  O suffering, suffering, stay closed in your
  closed cell; and do not double your tears this
  limpid Castalie! Shut up, shut up, sad bird, you
  insults the forest by tormenting its rural calm
  of your singing so ardently passionate!

  Silence, silence, or if it is scary to be silent,
  borrows its air more from the field starling
  simple, to him whose joyful carelessness is better
  made for those English forests that your shrill cry
  despair. Ah! shut up, and let the north wind
  take your lai to the rocky hills of Thrace,
  to the stormy bay of Daulis.

  One more moment! The scared leaves will be
  agitated: perhaps Endymion will have crossed the meadow,
  loving the moon, and that quiet Thames
  will have heard Pan beat and make the water fly,
  groping for a reed, to draw out of its
  blue cave some innocent Naiad, who, shared
  between joy and fear, listen to his flute.

  One more moment! The awakened turtledove cooed;
  the silver girl of the silver sea chained,
  of his loving hands, his inconstant who
  was going to hunt, and Dryopé parted the branches of
  his oak tree to see the restive haired teenager
  gilded to revolt under his yoke.

  One more moment! The trees bowed
  to fuck the pale Daphne who has barely left the
  languor of trembling laurels, and Salmacis, in
  her isolation, exposed her barren beauty before
  the moon, and across the valley, with a sad and voluptuous
  smile, passed Antinous; the red lotus
  of the Nile

  half bent out of the black curls of her hair,
  to veil the charm buried under these eyelids
  asleep; or it is, over there, on this
  slope covered with grass, the intangible Artemis with
  bare limbs under his tunic, pulled up high, which
  commanded his dogs to give voice, which
  flushed out the deer from its green rested by its
  shrill screams and the sting of his sword.

  Keep calm, keep calm, O passionate heart, stay
  calm! Oh melancholy, close your raven wing,
  O Dryad who sobs, do not leave the hollow
  from your hill to come and give an answer too
  discouraged. O winged Marsyas, stop complaining.
  Apollo does not like to hear songs like this
  troubled by suffering.

  It was a dream: the clearing is deserted. No sweet
  laughter at Ionia does not stir the air. The Thames crawls, lazy
  and leaden, and thick wood, become desolate again,
  desert, fled the young Bacohus with his noisy
  procession. And yet from Nuneham wood comes
  always this vibrant melody,

  so sad, you'd think you heard a human heart
  break into each separate note. That's a quality
  that music sometimes possesses, because it is the art that
  closer to tears and memories. Poor
  Philomele in mourning, what are you afraid of? Your sister does
  does not haunt these campaigns, Pandion is not here.

  Here we never see a cruel master, armed with
  murderous blade, no tissue formed of blood
  badges; it's just mossy valleys, do
  for comrades who go on an adventure, hot
  valleys where the tired student rests, his book
  half closed, and many winding alleys, where the
  evening, the rustic lovers are happy to exchange
  their naive words.

  The harmless rabbit frolic with its cubs on the
  path traced by the towpath, where until recently,
  a troop of merry fellows jostling each other at will,
  encouraged the rowing teams with his loud cries;
  the spider with its silver threads works at
  his little profession, and dark crested walls
  red mist

  from the isolated farm leaves a flickering light.
  This is where the tired shepherd pushes his
  bleating flock, and encloses it in the formed par
  of hurdles. A muffled clamor comes from somewhere
  Oxford boat, stopped at the Sandford barrier,
  and makes the moorhen rise from its shelter with a start
  in the reeds; and the dark shadows lengthen
  on the hill, fluttering like swallows.

  The heron passes, returning to the lake, its home. The
  blue fog creeps through the quivering trees.
  The silent stars, worlds of gold, appear
  one by one, and like a flower that hunts
  the breeze, a sparkling moon flies across the sky
  shiny. He is the silent arbiter of all your melancholy complaint,
  enchanting.

  She doesn't care about you; why would she care?
  Endymion, she knows, is not far away.
  It's me, it's me, whose soul is like the reed,
  who cannot play any message by himself,
  but who sings on the orders of others; it's me who
  will be driven by all the winds on the vast ocean of
  suffering.

  Ah! this brown bird is silent; an exquisite trill
  seems to have stayed in the dark foliage, and die
  in musical accents. Besides, the air is silent,
  so silent that we could hear the
  bat, with short wings, wander and turn
  above the pines, which could be counted one to
  one each droplet of dew that falls from the chalice
  overflowing from the bellflower.

  And far away, by the plain that spreads out, across
  the grouped willows, and the brown bushes, the high
  Magdalen tower, terminated by a weather vane
  of gold, hides the long Grand'Rue of the little one
  city! Warning! here is the bell of the door of
  Christ Church resoundingly announces the
  curfew.




MORNING PRINT

  The blue and gold nocturnal of the Thames has given way to
  a symphony in gray. A boat loaded with hay
  the ocher color came off the quay. Icy in
  his coldness,

  the yellow fog descended following the bridges,
  so that the walls of the houses took the air
  shadows, and may Saint Paul hover like a
  bubble above the city.

  Then suddenly the noise of the city arose,
  the streets were filled with country carts
  and a bird flew to the shining roofs and
  sung.

  But a pale woman, and all alone, whose day
  kiss the discolored hair, back and forth under the
  the harsh clarity of the gas lamps, the flame on the lips and
  the petrified heart.




MAGDALEN WALKS

  The little white clouds are struggling to race
  across the sky, and the fields are strewn with gold
  of the flower of Mars. The asphodel arises under the
  feet, and the fringed larch sway and sway
  when the starling in a hurry passes close by.

  A delicate scent spreads over the wings of
  the morning breeze, the smell of leaves, and grass, and
  of freshly turned terra. The birds sing
  cheerfully the happy birth of Spring, and
  hopping from branch to branch on the trees that
  sway.

  And everywhere the woods are animated by the murmur and
  the sounds of spring, and the rose bud
  burst on the climbing rose, and the mass of
  crocus is a shivering moon of fire, lined with
  all parts of an amethyst ring.

  And the plane tree says in a low voice to the pine something
  love story, so well that this one, without smiling,
  shakes and shakes his green cloak, and the darkness,
  in the hollow of the mountain elm, lights up
  of the iridescent glow that the shining rainbow casts on the
  throat and silver breast of the dove.

  See, over there, the lark abruptly leaves its
  reads in the meadow breaking the threads of the Virgin and
  networks of dew, and spinning over the river,
  like a blue flame, the kingfisher
  fly like an arrow and cut through the air.




ATHANASIA

  In this great and thin abode of Art, where
  don't miss any of the great things
  men saved time, we brought the body
  withered of a dead girl before the happy
  the youth of the world would have reached its flowering. She
  had been seen by isolated Arabs, well hidden
  in the dark bosom of a black pyramid.

  But when we had unrolled the strips of linen
  enveloped the body of the Egyptian, here we are
  found, in the palm of his hand, a small seed
  which was sown in English soil, and which produced
  a wonderful snow of starry flowers, and spread
  rich scents in our spring air.

  This flower attracted by such strange charms,
  that she completely forgot the asphodel, and that
  the brown bee, the lover of the lily, abandoned the cup
  which she made her ordinary stay, because we would not have
  not believed that this was something earthly,
  but rather that it had been stolen from some
  Arcadia of the sky.

  In vain the sad Narcissus, languishing and paled by
  contemplation of her own beauty, leaned over
  the stream; the purple dragonfly could not find
  no more attraction to shine its wings with the gold of its dust,
  more pleasure in kissing the jasmine flower, or
  to make the pearls of dew fall from the eucharis.

  For love of her, the passionate nightingale forgot
  the mountains of Thrace and the cruel king; and the pale
  turtledove no longer thought of sailing through the
  humid weather, at the time of flowering. She was looking for
  to hover around this flower of Egypt, with
  her wing of silver and her throat of amethyst.

  While the blazing sun was blazing above
  from its blue tower, a refreshing wind came stealthily
  from the land of snows, and the warm south wind
  came with tender tears of dew, and moistened
  its white leaves, when Hesperus appears in
  these sky meadows with the color of seaweed on
  which elongate the scarlet bands of the setting sun.

  But when the tired birds had ceased their
  love songs through the deserted fields that
  haunt the lilies, when, wide and resplendent
  like a silver shield the moon swayed
  in the height of the sapphire sky, is a dream
  strange, a bad memory did not come to shake
  all the trembling petals of its flowers?

  Oh! no, to this magnificent flower, a thousand
  years seemed only the extension of a
  beautiful summer day. She didn't know anything about the tide
  gnawing fears, which turn into one
  dull gray the gold of the hair in a young man.
  She never knew the terrible yearning after the
  death, nor the regret that all
  deadly to be born.

  Because we go to death playing the flute,
  while dancing, and we wouldn't want to go through
  the ivory gate, like a melancholy river,
  tired of sinking, rushes like a lover, into the
  terrible sea, and find it profitable to die if
  gloriously.

  We waste our majestic strength in struggles
  infertile against the legions of the world led
  by the noisy worry; she never feels decadence,
  but she draws life from the pure light
  of the sun, and in the sublime air; we live under the
  devastating power of Time; she is the child of
  all eternity.




SERENADE

  The west wind blows hard through the dark
  Aegean Sea, and at the foot of the secret marble staircase, my
  Tyrian galley awaits you. Come down, the sail of
  purple is deployed. The watchman sleeps in the
  city. Oh! leave your bed embroidered with lilies, oh
  my Lady, come down, come down.

  She won't come, I know her well; she didn't
  no concern of a lover's wishes, and a man
  would have little good to say about a creature if
  cruel and so beautiful. True love is only one
  woman's toy; they have never known pain
  of a lover, and I who loved as much as loved a
  young man, I must love in vain, that I love
  in vain.

  O noble pilot, tell me the truth. Is this the
  shining with golden hair, or is it just the
  network of dew in these passion flowers that
  here? Good sailor, come and tell me now:
  is this the hand of my Lady? or is it just the reflection
  from the bow, where is it still only the sand
  silver.

  No, no, this is not the network of dew, this
  is not sand edged with silver, it is really
  my dear Lady, with her golden hair and her hand
  of lilies. O noble pilot, rule on the side of Troy
  Good sailor, play the heavy oar. It's the queen
  of life and joy that we must take from the shore
  Greek.

  The discolored sky takes on a faint hue
  blue; another hour, and it will be daylight. On board! at
  edge! my valiant crew. O my Lady, let's run away!
  let's run away! O noble Pilot, turn the bow towards Troy.
  Good sailor, actively plays the heavy oar. O
  you whom I love as only a young man loves,
  O you whom I will love with an eternal love.





ENDYMION

  On apple trees hang golden fruit, and in Arcadia,
  the birds are singing at the top of their lungs; the ewes
  lying bleating in the park; the wild goat
  runs through the forest. But yesterday he told his love,
  I know it will come back to me. O moon that arise, oh
  Lady the moon, be a sentinel for my
  lover. It is impossible that you do not know him
  not very well, because he wears shoes of
  purple; it is impossible that you do not know him
  not very well, because he is armed with the pastoral staff,
  and he's as sweet as a dove, and his
  hair is brown and curly.

  Now the turtledove has stopped calling
  which she addressed to her servant with the red feet.
  The gray wolf prowls around the stable. The seneschal
  singer of the lily is asleep in the corolla of the lily.
  and everywhere the purple hills are buried in
  the darkness. O rising moon, o holy moon,
  stop on the top of Hélicé, and if you are
  nice to be a witness of my faithful love, ah! if
  you see the purple shoe, the crook and
  the elbow tree, the young man's brown hair,
  and the goatskin wrapped around his arm,
  tell him I'm waiting for him here, in the farm where shines
  the reed wick.

  The falling dew is cold, icy, and no bird
  does not sing in Arcadia. Small Fauns
  abandoned the hill, and even the tired asphodel
  closed its golden doors, and yet my
  lover does not come back to me. Deceptive moon,
  deceptive moon! O moon that fades! or
  so is my faithful lover gone? Where are the lips
  vermilion, shepherd's crook, shoes
  purple? Why deploy this silver banner?
  Why take this veil of mists
  mobile? Ah! it's you who owns young Endymion,
  it is you who have these lips intended for
  kiss.


LA BELLA DONNA DELLA MIA MENTE

  My limbs are consumed by a flame. My
  feet are weary of traveling, and by dint of invoking the
  name of my lady, my lips have now unlearned
  to sing.

  O linnet, in the bush of wild roses, unfurls
  your melody on my love. O lark, sing
  above, in honor of love: a lady
  passes very close.

  She is too beautiful for a man, whoever he
  either, can see or possess the one who charmed his
  heart; more beautiful than a queen, than a courtesan,
  or that the water where the night reflects the moon.

  Her hair is held back by leaves of
  myrtle (green leaves on her golden hair). The
  green grasses among the yellow sheaves of the harvest
  autumn are not more beautiful.

  Her lips, small, more made to kiss him than
  to exhale the bitter complaint of pain, tremble
  like the water of the stream, or like the
  roses after the evening rain.

  His neck has the whiteness of sweet clover, which reddens
  fun in the sun; the throbbing throat of linnet
  is not more charming to contemplate.

  As well as a pomegranate cut in half, with its
  white grains, such is its scarlet mouth; her cheeks
  are like the melted shade offered by fishing which
  blushed from the south side.

  O intertwined hands! O delicate white body, made
  for love and suffering! O Abode of love!
  Opal flower desolate and beaten by the rain!




SONG

  A gold ring and a white dove like
  milk, such are the gifts which suit you;
  then a hemp rope for your love,
  to hang it on some tree.

  For you, an ivory dwelling (roses are
  white in the arbor of roses), and for me,
  a little bed to stretch out (white, oh! she is
  white the flower of the hemlock)!

  Myrtle and jasmine for you (oh! She is
  beautiful to see, the red rose!), and for me, the cypress
  and rue (the most beautiful of all is rosemary).

  For you, three lovers, longing for your hand (the grass
  green on a dead man's grave), for me, space
  three steps in the sand (that we plant lilies of
  side of my head)!





PRINTS



I - THE SILHOUETTES

  The sea is stained with gray bars, the wind bleak
  and funeral sings out of tune, and like a withered leaf,
  the moon's reflection is chased across the bay
  stormy.

  Drawn by a sharp outline on the pale sand, lies the
  black boat. A moss, in his carefree joy,
  climbs aboard. We see the laughter on his face and the whiteness
  of his hand.

  And up there can be heard the cry of curlews, where by
  the meadow darkened by the heights, pass the
  young harvesters with tanned necks, silhouettes
  which stand out against the sky.

II - THE FOLLOWING OF THE MOON

  For the senses outside, it is peace, a peace
  dreamy in all directions, a deep silence
  on the earth shrouded in shadows, a silence
  deep where the shadows cease.

  Apart from a cry that awakens a piercing echo, and that
  launches a bird which laments in its loneliness, a
  corncrake calling his mate, and the answer
  part of the hill lost in the fog.

  And suddenly the moon withdraws from the brightening skies,
  his sickle, and flees to his dark cave, enveloped
  in a yellow gauze veil.




THE TOMB OF KEATS

  Now safe from the injustice of the world and
  his suffering, he rests under the blue veil of the Divinity.
  Taken from life, when life and love
  were in all their novelty, so lies the most
  young of the martyrs;

  handsome like Sébastien, and like him,
  prematurely died. No cypress casts its shadow
  on his tomb, no funeral yew, but sweet
  violets, which weep with the dew, weave on
  remains a chain which constantly blooms.

  O heart so proud that misery broke, O lips,
  sweeter since those of Mitylene, oh poet
  painter of our English land!

  Your name was written on the water, - and it will survive - and
  tears like mine will keep
  green your memory, as will those of Isabelle
  for the tree of his Basil.




THEOCRITE

VILLANELLE

  O singer of Persephoné, in your dark and
  deserted meadows, do you remember Sicily?

  The bee still flutters through the ivy, where
  lies solemnly buried Amaryllis, oh singer
  of Perséphoné!

  Simaetha summons Hecate and hears at her door
  ferocious dogs; do you remember sicily?

  Silent by the light and laughing sea, the poor
  Polyphemus deplores his fate, O singer of Perséphoné!

  And always, in his childish emulation, the
  young Daphnis challenges his comrade: do you remember
  from Sicily?

  Slender Lacon keeps a goat for you, and
  it is you that the merry shepherds are waiting for; oh singer
  of Perséphoné, do you remember Sicily?




IN THE GOLDEN ROOM

HARMONY

  His ivory hands wandered at random from whim
  on ivory keys, like the silver ray
  running through the poplars when they waver absently
  their pale leaves, or mobile foam
  of a restless sea, when the waves show
  their teeth to the fickle breeze.

  Her golden hair fell on the sea of ​​gold,
  like the delicate threads of the virgin, woven on the
  polished disc of the daisy, or like the sunflower
  who turns to the sun, when the jealous night
  completed the darkness, and that the lance of the lily surrounds itself
  of a halo.

  And her soft, red lips on those lips,
  mine burned like the fire of rubies set in
  the oscillating lamp of a crimson reliquary, or
  like the bleeding wounds of the pomegranate, or
  the heart of the lotus all flooded, all wet from
  blood spilled from the pink and red vine ...




MARGARET'S BALL

NORMAN

  --I am tired of staying in the forest, while the
  knights meet in the market square.

  - No, don't go to the red-roofed city,
  fear that the shackles of war horses
  bruise.

  --But no, I will not go where overlap
  the Squires, I will limit myself to walking alongside
  Mrs.

  --Alas! Alas! You are too reckless! The son
  of a forester is not made to eat in
  gold.

  - Will she love me less because each time
  Saint-Martin, my father shows himself wearing a leotard
  green?

  - Perhaps she is busy embroidering a tapestry.
  The time zone and the shuttle don't suit you
  point.

  --Ah! if she is working on a sumptuous tapestry,
  I could untangle the wires in the light of the fire.

  --Perhaps she sets out to hunt deer.
  How to follow it by mountains and seas?

  --Ah! if it straddles the yard i could
  run by his side and blow the hallali.

  --Perhaps she is kneeling in Saint-Denis
  (may Our Lady have great pity on her soul!).

  --Ah! if she prays in the lonely chapel, i
  could swing the censer and ring the bell.

  - Go back, my son, your face is so pale,
  and the father will fill you a cup of ale.

  --But who are these knights in rich costumes?
  Is it a show where the
  rich people?

  --It is the King of England, who crossed the sea
  to come and visit our beautiful country.

  --But why does the curfew sound
  also, deaf, and why these people in mourning who
  follow in line?

  --Oh! it is Hugues d'Amiens, the son of my
  sister, who lies dead, for her day has come.

  - No, no, for I can clearly see lilies
  white. It is not a vigorous man who lies
  on beer.

  --It was the old lady Jeannette, who kept the
  lease; I was sure she would die in the early days
  fall.

  --Dame Jeannette did not have that golden hair
  burnished; old Jeannette was not a pretty
  girl.

  --- This is not someone of our kind, someone
  of our family (may Notre-Dame preserve it
  of all sin!).

  --But I hear the sweet voice of the child who
  sings: "She is dead, Marguerite!"

  - Come home, my son, and get into bed, and leave
  the dead bury their dead.

  --O mother, you know how sincerely I loved her.
  O mother, is one grave wide enough
  for two?




THE FATE OF THE KING'S DAUGHTER

BRETON

  Seven stars in the still water, and seven in the sky,
  seven sins on the king's daughter, and they are deeply
  hidden in his soul.

  At her feet are red roses (roses are
  red in her hair of red gold). And see!
  still red roses in the place where meet
  his chest and belt.

  He is beautiful, the knight who lies, murdered, among
  gorse and reeds; see the meager fish
  in a hurry to feast on corpses.

  It is charming the page which is extended here (from
  cloth of gold, it is a beautiful booty); see in the air the
  black crows. They are black, oh! they are black
  like the night.

  What are these immobile, inert corpses doing there?
  (she has blood on her hand), why are lilies
  stained red? (there is blood on the sand of
  River).

  There are two men who come on horseback from
  south and east, and two that come from north and
  the west, abundant feast for the black raven, security
  for the king's daughter.

  There is a man who loves her loyally (red,
  Oh! that the blood stain is red); he dug
  a grave near the dark eye (only one
  tomb will suffice for four).

  No moon in the calm sky; no moon in the water
  black. And on her soul she has seven sins, he has one
  sin on his own.





AMOR INTELLECTUALIS

  We have often traveled the valleys of Castalie,
  and heard the sweet accents of music
  country played on antique flutes to vulgar
  unknown, and often we launched our
  boat on this sea

  where the nine Muses established their empire, and traced
  our furrows freely through the waves and the foam,
  without deploying our hesitant sails to win
  a safer abode, until we had
  fully loaded our boat.

  Of these treasures, of these spoils, here is what remains,
  the passion of Sordelio [10], the suave outline of the young
  Endymion [11], the important Tamburlaine
  pushing in front of him his haridelles satiated with
  well-being [12], and better than that, the sevenfold vision
  of Florentin [13], and the solemn harmonies of
  Milton with a stern forehead.

[Note 10: _Sordello_, poem by Robert Browning.]

[Note 11: _Endymion_, poem by Keats.]

[Note 12: _Tamerlaen_, play by Marlowe.]

[Note 13: _La divine Comédie_.]






SANTA DECCA

  The Gods are dead; we have stopped offering
  to Pallas with the eyes: gray wreaths of leaves
  olive tree! Demeter's child no longer receives
  tithe of our sheaves, and around noon the shepherds sing
  fearlessly, for Pan is dead; more turbulent
  love affairs by secret glades and
  the tortuous asylums. Young Hylas is no longer looking
  the sources; the great Pan is dead, and he is the son
  of Mary who is king.

  And yet, perhaps on this island that the sea
  holds in ecstasy, some god, chewing the bitter fruit
  of memory, remain hidden among the asphodels!
  O Love, if there was still one we would do
  wisely to flee his anger! No! but look,
  the leaves stir. Let’s watch for a moment.





A VISION

  Two crowned kings, and another who stood at
  the gap, without the laurel green weighing very heavy
  on his head, but with a sad look, as if he
  was discouraged, tired of the incessant moaning
  of man,

  about sins that cannot be erased by
  bleating victim, with long soft lips
  nourished with tears and kisses. He was surrounded by a
  black and red garment, and at his feet I saw a
  broken stone

  from which sprang lilies like doves,
  rising to his knees. And so, at this sight, my
  heart kindling with a flame,

  I shouted to Beatrice: "What are they?" And she
  replied, for she knew their names well:
  first is Aeschylus, the second is Sophocles, and
  finally (large stream of tears), it is Euripides.





TRAVEL PRINT

  The sea was the color of sapphire, and the sky, in
  the air, burned like a heated opal: we
  hoisted the sail; the wind was blowing with force from
  side of the blue countries which extend towards the East.

  From the steep bow, I noticed, with, an attention
  more lively, Zacynthos, and every olive wood,
  and every bay, the cliffs of Ithaca, and the
  snowy peak of Lycaon, and all the hills of
  Arcadia with their flower adornment.

  The flapping of the sail against the mast, and the
  ripples in the water on the sides,
  and the ripples in the laughter of the young girls,
  the front,

  no other noises. When the West is set on fire
  and a red sun swayed over the seas, I was,
  finally, on Greek soil.





SHELLEY'S TOMB

  Like torches that have finished burning
  near the bed of a sick person, the thin cypress trees
  stand around the stone which the sun has whitened.
  This is where the little nocturnal owl established its
  throne, which the light lizard shows its tin-decked
  gems, and where the chalice-shaped poppies
  flare up to red, in the silent room
  of this pyramid here, certainly
  some Sphinx of the world lurks in the darkness
  old, fierce guardian of this stay loved by
  dead.

  Ah! without doubt it is sweet to rest in the
  maternal womb of the earth, august mother of the eternal
  sleep. But how much sweeter it is for you
  to have an incessantly agitated grave, in the
  blue cave of the depths with sound echoes,
  or where they are swallowed up in darkness
  immense vessels struck against the flanks of
  some cliff eaten away by the wave.

_Rome_.






NEAR ARNO

  Buckthorn on the sea is tinged with scarlet at the
  dawn light, although the gray shadows of
  the night still envelops Florence like a
  shroud.

  The dew sparkles on the hill and the flowers
  shine above us. Yes! but the cicadas
  fled and the little Attic song fell silent.

  Only the leaves are gently agitated by the
  soft breath of the breeze, and in the valley that
  the almond tree, we hear the solitary nightingale.

  The day will soon come to silence you, O nightingale,
  sing heartily while still on the
  shady grove shatter the arrows of the moon.

  Before stealthily, in a fog
  sea ​​green, the morning slips through the meadow,
  and lets see to the scared eyes of love the long ones
  white fingers of dawn,

  hastily climbing the eastern sky to seize and
  put to death the trembling night, without having the
  least concern for what charms my heart or
  what the nightingale could die of.





FABIEN DEI FRANCHI

  The silent room, the creeping darkness
  with a heavy step, the dead who travel fast, the
  door that opens, the ghost's white fingers resting
  on your shoulders,

  and then the duel without witnesses in the clearing,
  the broken swords, the muffled cry, the blood, your big ones
  eyes full of satisfied revenge, now
  that everything is over, - these things are more than enough, - but
  you were done

  for a more august creation! Delirious Léar had to,
  at your command, wander on the moor, to
  followed by the screaming mockery of madness. For you,
  Romeo

  should set the trap of his love and terror
  desperate to draw Richard's dagger from its scabbard;
  you are a dip that should resonate
  the lips of Sh akespeare.




PHEDRE

  How vain and monotonous it must appear
  ordinary world, for those who, like you, could have
  converse in Florence with Mirandola, or take a walk
  among the fresh olive trees of the Academy!

  You would have gathered from a green stream
  reeds to make a piercing flute, Pan,
  the goat-foot god, and you would have played with the
  white young girls in this Pheacian grove where
  the grave Odysseus awoke from her dream.

  Ah! surely once an urn of Attic clay
  contained your dead dust, and you came back to life
  in this vulgar world, so monotonous and so vain,

  because you were tired of the sunless day, and
  boring plains where the scentless asphodel grows,
  and loveless lips that men kiss
  in Hades.




PORTIA

  I am not surprised that Bassanio was enough
  reckless to risk everything he had on the
  lead [14], and that the proud Aragon bowed so low
  there head, that this ardent heart of Morocco [15] is cooled;

  because in this sumptuous gold lamé costume, and who
  has more gold than the golden sun, none of the women
  contemplated by Veronese had half of the
  beauty that I contemplate.

[Note 14: Bassanio, in the _Merchand de Venise_, plays his life
on the lead chest where the portrait of Portia is hidden.]

[Note 15: The Prince of Aragon and the Prince of Morocco are both
rivals of Bassanio.]

  And yet you were more beautiful when, protecting yourself
  of the shield of wisdom, you took the robe
  severe law clerk, and that you prevented the laws from
  Venice to deliver

  Antonio's heart to that accursed Jew. O Portia,
  accept my heart; it is yours by right, I believe
  that I will not raise any quarrels over my engagement.





QUEEN HENRIETTE-MARIE

  Under the solitary tent, in the hope of
  victory, she remains, her eyes troubled by the
  mists of suffering, like a lily
  the wave tilts; the cries and sounds of battle,
  the bloody sky,

  the scourge of war, the sinking of chivalry
  could not give birth in his proud soul a vulgar
  fear. She bravely awaits her Lord,
  the King, and his whole soul burns with ecstasy
  of passion.

  O hair of gold, O lips of purple, O face
  made for the seduction and love of man!
  With you I forget the fatigue and worry,

  and rolls it without love where all rest is unknown
  and the accelerated pulse of Time, and the deadly weariness
  of the soul, my freedom and my republican past.





GLUKUPICROS ERÔS

  My darling, I don't blame you, because I was
  in my fault; if I had not been made
  common clay, I would have climbed the high peaks,
  still pristine, experienced the most invigorating atmosphere,
  the larger day.

  From the desert of my passion spent in vain I have
  brings out a better, clearer, lit song
  a brighter flame of fuller freedom,
  fought some headache
  hydra.

  If my lips, bruised by kisses that don't
  spurted out blood, could answer
  by singing, you would have walked with Bice and the
  angels on this green and variegated meadow.

  I would have followed the road where Dante, walking it,
  saw the suns of the seven circles shine! Yes maybe
  would i have seen the heavens open as they opened
  for the Florentine.

  And the mighty nations would have crowned me,
  I who now have neither a crown nor a
  last name. And the rising of a dawn would have found me kneeling
  on the threshold of the Temple of Glory.

  I would have taken my place in this marble circle where the
  older is like the younger of the bards,
  where honey continually falls from the flute, where the strings
  of the lyre are constantly strained.

  Keats lifted her virginal curls on top
  of the cup of wine mixed with poppies, and his mouth
  immortal kissed my forehead, and my hand squeezed
  his hand in the embrace of noble love.

  And in the spring, in the season when the dove,
  with her iridescent chest brushes the apple blossoms,
  two young lovers, lying in the orchard, would have
  read the story of our love,

  would have read the legend of my passion, like
  the bitter secret of my heart, exchanged kisses
  like us, but would never have parted,
  as destiny now orders us.

  For the purple flower of our life is devoured by
  lift rodent from the truth, and no hand is able
  to reunite the fallen and withered petals of the
  rose of youth.

  Still I don't regret having you
  loved. Teenager that I was, could I do otherwise
  --for the voracious teeth of Time devour,
  and the years of chasing silent steps.

  We go, carried away without a rudder, at will
  of a storm, and when the storm of youth has passed,
  no more lyre, no more lute, no more choir;
  then appears death, silent pilot.

  And inside the grave there is no more pleasure,
  for the worm grows fat with corruption, and desire,
  after a shiver, turns to ash, and the tree
  passion does not bear fruit.

  Ah! what could I do but love you? The
  Mother of God was less dear to me, and less
  dear the goddess of Kythera rising from the sea
  like a silver lily.

  I made my choice, I lived my poems, and
  though my youth has faded away in wasted days,
  I found the lover's myrtle crown
  preferable to the poet's laurel wreath.





TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PREFACE

  Alas!
  The Garden of Eros.
  The new Helen.
  Charmides.
  Panthea.
  Humanitad.
  Sonnet to freedom.
  Ave Imperatrix.
  In Milton.
  Louis-Napoleon.
  Sonnet on the massacre of Christians in Bulgaria.
  Quantum mutata.
  Libertatis sacra fames.
  Theoretikos.
  Requiescat.
  Sonnet composed on approaching Italy.
  San Miniato.
  Ave, Maria, gratia plena.
  Italia.
  Sonnet writes during Holy Week in Genoa.
  Rome which I have not visited.
  Urbs sacra et aeterna.
  Sonnet composed after the hearing of _Dies irae_, sung
      in the Sistine Chapel.
  Easter.
  E tenebris.
  Vita nuova.
  Madonna mia.
  Itys' song.
  Morning print.
  Walks in Magdalen.
  Athanasia.
  Serenade.
  Endymion.
  La Bella gave della mia mente.
  Song.
  Impressions: I. - The silhouettes.
              II .-- The escape of the moon.
  Keats's grave.
  Theocrite, villanelle.
  In the golden room, harmony.
  Ballad of Marguerite, Norman.
  The fate of the king's daughter, Breton.
  Amor intellectualis.
  Santa Decca.
  A vision.
  Travel print.
  Shelley's grave.
  Near the Arno.
  Fabien dei Franchi.
  Phaedrus.
  Portia.
  Queen Henriette-Marie.
  Glukupicros Erôs.