Classic Poem

I

Along the tangled path and in the red
mountain and in the monotonous plain
there survives not a trace of verdure,
not a blade of grass, not a thistle.

Alone from the obscure latania
the arid ivy hangs its last remains
above the murmur of the south-west wind
and the rustling heaps of stubble straw.

Evening falls cinereous and chill
and over the homestead and the sea
an overwhelming desolation spreads.

There is no sound of life save, at the hour
of the most sorrowful decline of day,
the ashen crane crying among the fallows.

II

What depth of sadness over all the scene!
At the destroying breath of the cold north
all movement was suspended in the fields
and the branches and the trunks made moan.

There are no more nests, nor songs, nor leaves,
not a murmur, not a voice is heard,
and the wild goose, by the trembling lake,
with its croaking scarcely breaks the still.

In the regions where Aquilon lets loose
its fury and with clamour rushes headlong,
ceaseless, ceaseless are the frost and rain;

While the sepulchral whiteness of the snow
immensely spreads and ever further spreads,
hope-destroying, tragic, infinite.

III

If such might of frozen solitude
holds in thralls the sea and earth and sky,
if the limpid brook has ceased to flow
and the rose to sway upon the mead,

ah! let us not think that life expires:
in the winding-sheet of its white veil,
beneath the opaque crystal of the ice,
immortal resurrection is in store.

But what ear can catch the mysterious
voices that with mystic murmur rise
from out the most hidden womb of things?

Nothing perishes: the buried germ,
the chrysalis enveloped in its sheath,
the cell and the grain . . . all are sleeping!