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Anonymous translation
IF to the fluttering folds of the quick sail | |
| My all of peace and comfort I impart; | |
| If to the treacherous tide and wavering gale | |
| My wife and child I lend, my soul’s best part; | |
| If on the seas, the sands, the clouds, I cast | 5 |
| Fond hopes, and beating hearts I leave behind, | |
| With no returning pledge beyond a mast | |
| That bends with every blast of wind,— | |
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| ’T is not the paltry thirst of gold could fire | |
| A heart that ever glowed with holier flame, | 10 |
| Nor glory tempt me with the vain desire | |
| To gild my memory with a fleeting fame. | |
| I go not, like the Florentine of old, | |
| The bitter bread of banishment to eat; | |
| No wave of faction, in its wildest roar, | 15 |
| Broke on my calm paternal seat. * * * * * | |
| But in the soul’s unfathomable wells, | |
| Unknown, inexplicable longings sleep; | |
| Like that strange instinct which the bird impels | |
| In search of other food athwart the deep. | 20 |
| What from those orient climes have they to gain? | |
| Have they not nests as mossy in our eaves, | |
| And, for their callow progeny, the grain | |
| Dropped from a thousand golden sheaves? | |
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| I too, like them, could find my portion here, | 25 |
| Enjoy the mountain slope, the river’s foam,— | |
| My humble wishes seek no loftier sphere; | |
| And yet like them I go, like them I come. | |
| Dim longings draw me on and point my path | |
| To Eastern sands, to Shem’s deserted shore, | 30 |
| The cradle of the world, where God in wrath | |
| Hardened the human heart of yore. | |
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| I have not yet felt on the sea of sand | |
| The slumberous rocking of the desert bark; | |
| Nor quenched my thirst at eve with quivering hand | 35 |
| By Hebron’s well, beneath the palm-trees dark; | |
| Nor in the pilgrim’s tent my mantle spread, | |
| Nor laid me in the dust where Job hath lain, | |
| Nor, while the canvas murmured overhead, | |
| Dreamed Jacob’s mystic dreams again. | 40 |
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| Of the world’s pages one is yet unread: | |
| How the stars tremble in Chaldea’s sky, | |
| With what a sense of nothingness we tread, | |
| How the heart beats, when God appears so nigh; | |
| How on the soul, beside some column lone, | 45 |
| The shadows of old days descend and hover,— | |
| How the grass speaks, the earth sends out its moan, | |
| And the breeze wails that wanders over. | |
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| I have not heard in the tall cedar-top | |
| The cries of nations echo to and fro, | 50 |
| Nor seen from Lebanon the eagles drop | |
| On Tyre’s deep-buried palaces below; | |
| I have not laid my head upon the ground | |
| Where Tadmor’s temples in the dust decay, | |
| Nor startled, with my footfall’s dreary sound, | 55 |
| The waste where Memnon’s empire lay. | |
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| I have not stretched where Jordan’s current flows, | |
| Heard how the loud-lamenting river weeps, | |
| With moans and cries sublimer even than those | |
| With which the mournful Prophet stirred its deeps; | 60 |
| Nor felt the transports which the soul inspire | |
| In the deep grot, where he, the bard of kings, | |
| Felt, at the dead of night, a hand of flame | |
| Seize on his harp, and sweep the strings. | |
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| I have not wandered o’er the plain whereon, | 65 |
| Beneath the olive-tree, the Saviour wept; | |
| Nor traced his tears the hallowed trees upon, | |
| Which jealous angels have not all outswept; | |
| Nor, in the garden, watched through nights sublime, | |
| Where, while the bloody sweat was undergone, | 70 |
| The echo of his sorrows and our crime | |
| Rung in one listening ear alone. | |
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| Nor have I bent my forehead on the spot | |
| Where his ascending footstep pressed the clay; | |
| Nor worn with lips devout the rock-hewn grot | 75 |
| Where, in his mother’s tears embalmed, he lay; | |
| Nor smote my breast on that sad mountain-head | |
| Where, even in death, conquering the Powers of Air, | |
| His arms, as to embrace our earth, he spread, | |
| And bowed his head, to bless it there. | 80 |
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| For these I leave my home; for these I stake | |
| My little span of useless years below: | |
| What matters it where winter-winds may shake | |
| The trunk that yields nor fruit nor foliage now? | |
| Fool! says the crowd. Theirs is the foolish part! | 85 |
| Not in one spot can the soul’s food be found; | |
| No!—to the poet thought is bread, his heart | |
| Lives on his Maker’s works around. * * * * * | |
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