Poems, translated and original

Chapter 12: THE WAVES THAT ON THE SPARKLING SAND.

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About This Book

A compact volume of translated and original lyric poems paired with a short tragic drama. The poems range from elegiac meditations on death, memory, and the fate of poets to vivid nature pieces about lakes, seas, and changing skies; they also include mythic and historical reflections, paraphrases of sacred texts, and shorter lyrical forms such as sonnets and songs. Recurrent concerns are remembrance versus oblivion, the consolations of landscape, poetic vocation, and the ceremonial practices surrounding burial, while the concluding tragedy adapts a Venetian incident into dramatic scenes.

THE WAVES THAT ON THE SPARKLING SAND.

The waves that on the sparkling sand

Their foaming crests upheave,

Lightly receding from the land,

Seem not a trace to leave.

Those billows in their ceaseless play,

Have worn the solid rocks away.

The summer winds, which wandering sigh

Amid the forest bower,

So gently as they murmur by,

Scarce lift the drooping flower.

Yet bear they, in autumnal gloom,

Spring’s withered beauties to the tomb.

Thus worldly cares, though lightly borne,

Their impress leave behind;

And spirits, which their bonds would spurn,

The blighting traces find.

’Till altered thoughts and hearts grown cold,

The change of passing years unfold.