I am the singer who of late put by
A J. Enrique Rodó.
To J. Enrique Rodó.
I am the singer who of late put by
The verse azulean and the chant profane,
Across whose nights a rossignol would cry
And prove himself a lark at morn again.
Lord was I of my garden-place of dreams,
The heaping roses and swan-haunted brakes;
Lord of the doves; lord of the silver streams,
Of gondolas and lyres upon the lakes.
And very eighteenth century; both old
And very modern; bold, cosmopolite;
Like Hugo daring, like Verlaine half-told,
And thirsting for illusions infinite.
From infancy, 'twas sorrow that I knew;
My youth — was ever youth my own indeed?—
Its roses still their perfume round me strew,
Their perfume of a melancholy seed—
A reinless colt, my instinct galloped free,
My youth bestrode a colt without a rein;
Drunken I went, a belted blade with me;
If I fell not — 'twas God who did sustain—
Within my garden stood a statue fair,
Of marble seeming yet of flesh and bone,
A gentle spirit was incarnate there
Of sensitive and sentimental tone.
So timid of the world, it fain would hide
And from its walls of silence issue not,
Save when the spring released upon its tide
The hour of melody it had begot —
The hour of sunset and the hidden kiss;
The hour of gloaming twilight and retreat;
The hour of madrigal, the hour of bliss,
Of " I adore thee " and " Alas " too sweet.
And 'mid the gamut of the flute, perchance,
Would come a ripple of crystal mysteries
Recalling Pan and his old Grecian dance
With the intoning of old Latin keys.
With such a sweep and ardor so intense
That on the statue suddenly were born
The muscled goat-thighs shaggy and immense
And on the brows the satyr's pair of horn.
As Gongora's Galatea, so in fine
The fair marquise of Verlaine captured me;
And so unto the passion half divine
Was joined a human sensuality;
All longing, and all ardor, the mere sense
And natural vigor; and without a sign
Of stage effect or literature's pretence—
If there was ever soul sincere — 'twas mine.
The ivory tower awakened my desire;
I longed to enclose myself in selfish bliss,
Yet hungered after space, my thirst on fire
For heaven, from out the shades of my abyss.
As with the sponge the salt sea saturates
Below the oozing wave, so was my heart
Tender and soft, bedrenched with bitter fates
That world and flesh and devil here impart.
But, through the grace of God, my conscience
Elected unto good its better part;
If there were hardness left in any sense,
It melted soft beneath the touch of Art.
My intellect was freed from baser thought,
My soul was bathed in the Castalian flood,
My heart a pilgrim went, and so I caught
The harmony from out the sacred wood.
O sacred wood! O rumor, that profound
Stirs from the sacred woodland's heart divine!
O plenteous fountain in whose power is wound
And overcome our destiny malign!
Grove of ideals, where the real halts,
Where flesh is flame alive, and Psyche floats;
The while the satyr makes his old assaults,
Let Philomel loose her azure-drunken throats.
Fantastic pearl and music amorous
A-down the green and flowering laurel tops;
Hypsipyle stealthily the rose doth buss
And the faun's mouth the tender stalklings crops.
There, where the god pursues the flying maid,
Where springs the reed of Pan from out the mire,
The Life Eternal hath its furrows laid
And wakens the All-Father's mystic choir.
The soul that enters there, disrobed should go
A-tremble with desire and longing pure,
Over the wounding spine and thorn below,—
So should it dream, be stirred, and sing secure.
Life, Light, and Truth, as in a triple flame
Produce the inner radiance infinite;
Art, pure as Christ, is heartened to exclaim:
"I am indeed the Life, the Truth, the Light!"
The Life is mystery; the Light is blind;
The Truth beyond our reach both daunts and tades;
The sheer perfection nowhere do we find;
The ideal sleeps a secret in the shades.
Therefore to be sincere is to be strong.
Bare as it is what glitter hath the star;
The water tells the fountain's soul in song
And voice of crystal flowing out afar.
Such my intent was, — of my spirit pure
To make a star, a fountain music-drawn,
With horror of the thing called literature—
And mad with madness of the gloam and dawn.
From the blue twilight such as gives the word
Which the celestial ecstasies inspire,
The haze and minor chord, — let flutes be heard!
Aurora, daughter of the Sun, — sound, lyres!
Let pass the stone if any use the sling;
Let pass, should hands of violence point the dart.
The stone from out the sling is for the waves a thing,
Hate's arrow of the idle wind is part.
Virtue is with the tranquil and the brave;
The fire interior burneth well and high;
The triumph is o'er rancor and the grave;
Toward Bethlehem — the caravan goes by!
Translated by Thomas Walsh
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