Poems, translated and original

Chapter 55: FROM MOUNTAINS AT THE DAWN OF DAY.

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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.

FROM MOUNTAINS AT THE DAWN OF DAY.

From mountains at the dawn of day

That wide and far their shadows send,

Beneath the sun’s more perfect ray

Brief and more brief the shades extend.

Till, risen the god to noontide height,

They’re bathed in living, gorgeous light.

’Tis thus the soul, through earthly taint

Though first its shrouded glories shine,

Spurns at the gloom each hour more faint,

And purer drinks the beam divine.

Till wrapt in rays from shadow free,

The noon-tide of eternity.