Classic Poem

Proffered to sun and moon
on my deserted shore I tell and tell
again the black beads of my destiny.

I am the same who once
entreated of the stars serenity . . .
and here am I, waiting and watching still!

I unwind my silent reel;
I contemplate my past and every hour
blushes for very nakedness as it passes.

Childish apparitions. . . . Was not mine,
in the blue opal of the sleepless dawn,
a swan imbrued with blood of agony?

I blew my bubble high in the unseeing
eddying air, and the untimely blast
shattered the crystal of the rainbow toy.

I let the world into my dream and loved
with love that sheltered in my innocent breast
the snake of doubt and the nightingale of song.

I craved to forge my life in an enormous
forge of love, with bellows of hurricanes,
with my own hands and without thought of mede;

or to be stainless snow upon the summit
of the tutelary mount, by nought
save sun and cloud and tempest overtopped;

or to be given in holocaust to the sorrows
of the fraternal herd, and the noble rain
water my blood converted into flowers. . . .

I curbed the urge of such sublime intent
and fed with my humility the flame
of a romantic unassuming ideal:

to be a glittering vase of crystal water
and plunged within it the miraculous stem
of a flower of godlike fashioning;

or to burn like yonder sacred lamp
consuming its sweet-smelling oil within
the alcove of the holy hermitage;

or to be a bird with lyric wiles
beguiling the pilgrim who has lost his way
and mocking at the sortilege of years. . . .

And I launched blindly forth, from rhyme to rhyme,
until at last the tower of my dreams
sundered at its base and overwhelmed me.

Neither laurel branch nor opalescent
halo of sanctity, neither fresh rose
nor noble thorn on my denuded brow.

In my youth I was the furtive fowler
who laid his snare in the forbidden close
to catch the bird of fugitive delights.

My quest was for the glory of the richest
trophy, and my flesh, a ravening wolf,
pursued the colt of runaway desire.

I killed my dream, that I might find the way
to sink my teeth in the envenomed fruit,
and many books made me all-ignorant.

(Evil by life's ironical grimace
is emphasized, and good shamefacedly
like a repentant shadow passes by). . . .

In the dark cavern of my consciousness
great love descended suddenly. . . . A wing
fluttered and to its call my hope arose.

I laid open my heart to her who came
holding a basket of roses in her hand. . .
and on my lips she kissed me, and was mine.

And all my past and all my present turned
to light. . . . One evening it went out and left
my life in the shadow of the departed.

Herd of the winds, high shepherd of the dawns,
beneath the indigo sweep of my lofty plain
I sought a quiet pasture for my hours;

and at the barking of the vigilant dog
the frantic scattering of my lambs remains
deaf to the lamentations of the bell.

I contemplated, the tragic labour ended,
the obliterated furrows and useless grain. . . .
I ploughed the water and I sowed the sand!

And here am I, trembling on the brink
of the solemnly accusing conscience. . . .
An evildoer in terror before himself!

I named me my own judge and I condemned me,
alone and outcast, to the extremest torment:
not to ask forgiveness of my folly
and in the dungeons of silence to end my days.