Classic Poem

CAPUTXII

How the poets, even the tame ones,
Rave and rhapsodize on Nature:
Singing, saying that our world
Is the temple of the Lord,

Bearing witness in its splendour
To the glory of the Maker,
Sun and moon and stars above us,
In the dome as lamps suspended.

All the same, my worthy poets,
Ye must own that inconvenient
Are the stairways of the temple —
Oh, the squalid crooked stairs!

All this toil o'er hill and hollow,
All this leaping over boulders,
Is a trial most exhausting
To my legs and to my spirit.

By my side Lascaro plodded,
Long and sallow, like a taper.
Never speaking, never laughing:
Dead, they say, — a witch's son.

Yes, the story runs he perished
Long ago, and by the magic
Of his mother, old Uraka,
Masquerades among the living.

Oh, the cursed temple stairway!
To this day I often marvel,
Recollecting those abysses,
That my neck escaped unbroken.

How the torrents roared and shouted!
How the pines beneath the scourging
Of the tempest howled! The heavens
Crashed and thundered — fearful weather!

In the little fisher's cottage
On the Lac-de-Gobe a shelter
We discovered, with some trout
That were excellent and toothsome.

In an easy-chair, on cushions,
Sat the ferryman reclining,
Grey and sick; his pretty nieces
Like a pair of angels nursed him:

Sturdy angels, somewhat Flemish —
Might indeed have stepped to greet us
From a Rubens; clear and healthy
Were their eyes; their hair was golden.

In their dimpled cheeks of damask
Peeped and lurked the roguish laughter;
Strong, voluptuous their limbs were,
Waking fear as well as pleasure.

Charming, pretty, kindly creatures,
Sweetly quarrelling together
As to what the sickly uncle
For a drink the most would relish.

While the one a goblet offers
Filled with brew of linden blossom,
Just as pressing is the other
With her elder-flower decoction.

" I will drink to-day of neither, "
Cried the old man, out of patience;
" Fetch me wine, that something better
I may taste and give my guests. "

Whether wine indeed I drank there
By the Lac-de-Gobe, I know not.
If in Brunswick I had met it,
I had taken it for mum.

Made of goat-skin black and goodly
Was the bottle — stinking foully;
But the old man drank delighted,
And grew cheerier and haler.

He recounted the achievements
Of the smugglers and banditti,
Who live merrily and freely
In the Pyrenean forests.

In the hoarier traditions
He was also versed, and told us
Of the battles of the giants
With the bears in times primeval.

Yes, before the immigration
Of the human race, the giants
Fought the bears to win the lordship
Of the forests and the valleys.

But when man arrived, the giants
Fled in panic from the country,
For such heads, although enormous,
Are not overcharged with brain.

Having reached at last the ocean,
And perceiving heaven mirrored
In the blue and shining water —
Then the fools, they tell us, thinking

That the water blue was heaven,
Pushing forward, tumbled headlong
In the sea, and, trusting blindly
In the care of God, were drowned.

While the bears by human prowess
Are exterminated slowly.
Year by year their number dwindles,
And they vanish from the mountains.

" So on earth, " observed the speaker,
" One is ousted by the other.
When the human race has perished,
Then the dwarfs will be the masters;

" Clever, thrifty little people,
In the bosom of the mountains,
Busy gathering and picking
In the rich and golden gorges.

" How they peep through every crevice,
With their tiny heads and cunning!
I have seen them in the moonlight,
And I tremble for the future.

" Ah, that power gold-begotten
Of the pigmies! Will our sons,
Like the giants, fleeing headlong,
In a watery heaven perish? "