| |
| THE ANCIENT songs | |
| Pass deathward mournfully. | |
| |
| Cold lips that sing no more, and withered wreaths, | |
| Regretful eyes and drooping breasts and wings— | |
| Symbols of ancient songs | 5 |
| Mournfully passing | |
| Down to the great white surges, | |
| Watched of none | |
| Save the frail sea-birds | |
| And the lithe pale girls, | 10 |
| Daughters of Okeanos. | |
| |
| And the songs pass | |
| From the green land | |
| Which lies upon the waves as a leaf | |
| On the flowers of hyacinth; | 15 |
| And they pass from the waters, | |
| The manifold winds and the dim moon, | |
| And they come, | |
| Silently winging through soft Kimmerian dusk, | |
| To the quiet level lands | 20 |
| That she keeps for us all, | |
| That she wrought for us all for sleep | |
| In the silver days of the earth’s dawning— | |
| Prosperine, daughter of Zeus. | |
| |
| And we turn from the Kuprian’s breasts, | 25 |
| And we turn from thee, | |
| Phoibos Apollon, | |
| And we turn from the music of old | |
| And the hills that we loved and the meads, | |
| And we turn from the fiery day, | 30 |
| And the lips that were over-sweet; | |
| For silently | |
| Brushing the fields with red-shod feet, | |
| With purple robe | |
| Searing the flowers as with a sudden flame, | 35 |
| Death, | |
| Thou hast come upon us. | |
| |
| And of all the ancient songs | |
| Passing to the swallow-blue halls | |
| By the dark streams of Persephone, | 40 |
| This only remains: | |
| That in the end we turn to thee, | |
| Death, | |
| That we turn to thee, singing | |
| One last song. | 45 |
| |
| O Death, | |
| Thou art an healing wind | |
| That blowest over white flowers | |
| A-tremble with dew; | |
| Thou art a wind flowing | 50 |
| Over long leagues of lonely sea; | |
| Thou art the dusk and the fragrance; | |
| Thou art the lips of love mournfully smiling; | |
| Thou art the pale peace of one | |
| Satiate with old desires; | 55 |
| Thou art the silence of beauty, | |
| And we look no more for the morning; | |
| We yearn no more for the sun, | |
| Since with thy white hands, | |
| Death, | 60 |
| Thou crownest us with the pallid chaplets, | |
| The slim colorless poppies | |
| Which in thy garden alone | |
| Softly thou gatherest. | |
| |
| And silently; | 65 |
| And with slow feet approaching; | |
| And with bowed head and unlit eyes, | |
| We kneel before thee. | |
| And thou, leaning towards us, | |
| Caressingly layest upon us | 70 |
| Flowers from thy thin cold hands, | |
| And, smiling as a chaste woman | |
| Knowing love in her heart, | |
| Thou sealest our eyes | |
| And the illimitable quietude | 75 |
| Comes gently upon us. | |
| |
