Poems, translated and original

Chapter 16: LIKE SOUTHERN BIRDS.

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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.

LIKE SOUTHERN BIRDS.

Like southern birds, whose wings of light

Are cold and hueless while at rest—

But spread to soar in upward flight,

Appear in glorious plumage drest;

The poet’s soul—while darkly close

Its pinions, bids no passion glow;

But roused at length from dull repose,

Lights, while it spurns, the world below.