Natureza e Elementos

Já o Inverno, expremendo as cãs nevosas,
Geme, de horrendas nuvens carregado;
Luz o aéreo fuzil, e o mar inchado
Investe ao pólo em serras escumosas;

Ó benignas manhãs!, tardes saudosas,
Em que folga o pastor, medrando o gado,
Em que brincam no ervoso e fértil prado
Ninfas e Amores, Zéfiros e Rosas!

Voltai, retrocedei, formosos dias:
Ou antes vem, vem tu, doce beleza
Que noutros campos mil prazeres crias;

E ao ver-te sentirá minha alma acesa
Os perfumes, o encanto, as alegrias,
Da estação que remoça a natureza.

Wake with the Sun, wake with the morn
Wake with the coming day,
Be with the dew and the flush new born,
But, unlike them, stay.

Mists fall of from what thou art
They are what we see.
Come and enter into our heart
And let life be.

The morn belongs to the empty world
Men are later here.
Come and let life be slowly unfurled
Off thee like fear.

And in thy terrible being but thou
Sans body nor soul
Pour all thy balm on my saddened brow,
And make my hope whole!


04/07/1917

DESOLATION

Here where the rugged hills
Their gnarled loose bases grip into the earth,
And nothing save the sorrow of our birth
From seeing the seeing spirit fills,
Here where, among the grim, deserted stones,
Na hope of green for desertness atones,
Or water's sound
Make sweet the solitude around,
Here may I lay
This day
My head
Upon the ground and say
No better bed
Can he who has but himself for life have,
Nor better grave.

The sterile part
Of love, feeling, was given me.
Fom the humanness even of a broken heart
God set me free.
Out of my destiny no flower was made
To grow.
All in me fated was not even to fade
Or e'en a vain and transient glory show.

The very need
For love or joy or the human part of thought,
Pride, and the abstract greed
For truth, that lifts the heart and doth allot
A value of self and world to consciousness –
Even this bliss
My empty heart has not.

O weary born,
Faded begun.
Gone from unseen shores to seen shores forlorn,
Sent out of sun-gone unto unborn sun!
The singer of his wish
To sing no song,
The poor spendthrift rich
With knowing not fo, what to long.
The Hyperion dispossessed
Ere birth
Of that sun-mansion set out beyond rest
Above the wide-lit stretches of the earth.

The uncrowned king
That never saw the land
Of which he oft doth sing,
And whose lost path he cannot understand
Nor know to dream steps him there to bring.
The priest deferred
From the inner shrine.
The thought but never uttered word,
The fore spilt wine,
The anxiousness for hope, the cold divine
Of anguish that no anguish human is,
The solitary pine
On the cold hill of consciousness.

The hour
The lord
Returns
Back to the polluted bower,
Home to the intransitable ford,
Again to the ice-padlocked burns:
The shadow
Fixedly thrown
On the green meadow
By a tree overgrown
With leaves, but fruitless, flowerless and lone.

The last
Sight of a shore
Which the unhalting ship doth pass
And where it never shall pass more;
But where the heart-dim sailor knows
Homes are happy because not his,
Lips warm because never his lips to kiss,
Gardens fair because therein grows
The unfound rose,
Hours soft, fate fresh, life a real fair elf
Because somewhere outside himself.


16/10/1916

Caiu uma pedra no charco,
caiu um penedo no rio,
caiu mais um cabo da boa esperança no mar,
prá gente se agarrar.

Deixámos de ver as nuvens
que nos tapavam o céu,
pudemos sentir de perto a meiguice do tempo
onde a gente se escondeu.

É que hoje
nasceu mais um dia.
É que hoje
nasceu mais alguém.
É que hoje
nasceu um poeta na serra com a estrela da manhã.

Foi quando os lobos uivaram,
foi quando o lince miou,
as ovelhas não tinham fome
e a alcateia repousou.

E entre os uivos e os miados
o poeta abriu o choro.
E entre os vales e os cabeços,
cavalgando uma alcateia
o poema deslizou.

Caiu uma pedra no charco,
caiu um penedo no rio,
caiu mais um cabo da boa esperança no mar,
prá gente se agarrar.

Deixámos de ver as nuvens
que nos tapavam o céu,
pudemos sentir de perto a meiguice do tempo
onde a gente se escondeu.

É que hoje
nasceu mais um dia.
É que hoje
nasceu mais alguém.
É que hoje
nasceu um poeta na serra com a estrela da manhã.

Foi quando os lobos uivaram,
foi quando o lince miou,
as ovelhas não tinham fome
e a alcateia repousou.

E entre os uivos e os miados
o poeta abriu o choro.
E entre os vales e os cabeços,
cavalgando uma alcateia
o poema deslizou.

Ship sailing out to sea,
If thou canst not take me,
Take ar least with thy hope
Of other ports my misery
And what in me doth grope.

Ship sailing far away
Let me dream thou canst go
Where I at last may
No longer live with woe
Or with grief stay.

Ship sailing out to Death
Go far, go far
Under the breath
Of the wind, while the star
Of Fate listeneth.

Ship that are not anywhere,
But that I dream,
That is why you art fair.
Sail or sail not... Seem
To sail. That is all. Where?

Ship that I dream and fades
In my dreams distance, go
There are happier glades
Beyond where I know
But this is today and woe.


22/07/1916

The Master said you must not heed
What others talk of at their need.

Under the happy trees they sit
That talk of nothing and of wit.
Under the silent trees they stand
That talk of mist and no man's land.
Under the sulky trees they lie
That wonder of the earth and sky.

This was the matter of the song
No one could sing or well or long.
This was the substance of the tale
No one could tell unless it fail.
This was the subject of the verse
The last one made, lest earth be worse.

So that the collateral nightingale
Forgot its music and its tale.
So the lark rose and found but air
And false dominion everywhere.
So the dropt eagle, loosing prey,
Swept by and owned but the void day.

Yet what the secret of all this
May be or was none now can guess.
Perhaps beyond what thought defines,
Like wine some chance that some one may
Make shade and sleep of yesterday.

But wether this be sense or nought,
Surely it was a careful thought
To have the lawn so nicely laid
Out and the critics all gainsaid,
It was the reason and the home.
The rest is why tis right to roam.


02/02/1917

Este foi o mês em que cantei
dentro de minha casa
debaixo
das oliveiras.

O mês em que a brisa me pôs nas mãos
uma harpa de folhas
e a terra me emprestou
sua flauta e sua lua.
Maré viva. Meu sangue atravessado
por um cometa visível a olho nu
tangido por satélites e aves de arribação
navegado por peixes desconhecidos.

Este foi o mês em que cantei
como quem morre e ressuscita
no terceiro dia
de cada sílaba.

O mês em que subi a uma colina
dentro de minha casa
olhei a terra e o mar
depois cantei
como quem faz com duas pedras
o primeiro lume. Palavras
e pedras. Palavras e lume
de uma vida.

Este foi o mês em que fui a um lugar santo
dentro de minha casa.
O mês em que saí dos campos
e me banhei no rio como quem se baptiza
e cantei debaixo das oliveiras
as mãos cheias de terra. Palavras
e terra
de uma vida.

Este foi o mês em que cantei
como quem espelha ao vento suas cinzas
e cresce de seu próprio adubo
carregado de folhas. Palavras
e folhas
de uma vida.

O mês em que a mulher
tocou meus ombros com sua graça
e me deu a beber
a água pura do seu poço.
Este foi o mês em que o filho
derramou dentro de mim
o orvalho e o sol
de sua manhã.

O mês em que cantei
como quem de si se perde e reencontra
nas coisas novamente nomeadas.

Este foi o mês em que atravessei montanhas
e cheguei a um lugar onde as palavras
escorriam leite e mel.
MILAGRE MILAGRE gritaram dentro de mim
as aves todas da floresta.

Então reparei que era o lugar do poema
o lugar santo onde cantei
entre mulher e o filho
como quem dá graças.

Este foi o mês em que cantei
dentro de minha casa
debaixo
das oliveiras.

When shall we rest?
The ceaseless waves
They have no quest.
The trees peace-ripe.
Their lifeless life
From sorrow saves.

When shall we go?
Wither? We care
Nothing to know.
Sorrow is here.
Aught may us cheer
Now of dim there.

What in us shall
Cease and leave peace?
Life holds in thrall
Our joy like pain,
Our loss-like gain,
Our stayed release.

Love cannot bless.
Bliss cannot live.
Joy's short caress
Passes like wind
Suddenly thinned
We dream and grieve.

Outward from us
There lies the land
Less luminous,
Where we may rest,
Leaving all quest,
Wishing no strand.

Ready the bark
For our repose.
Let us embark.
The sea is lone?
We are alone,
Pain but pain shows.

Remember nought.
Cease like a light
Suddenly not.
Merge like a dream
Into the stream
Of its own night.


25/04/1917

HORIZON

I

Unheard-of fathoms in the deep sea,
In cool caves deep
(The spoils of battle are not for thee)
For ever sleep.

No upward vision or shining mount
Rewards thy pain.
The secret angel keepeth no count
Of thy lost gain.

On the sphynx's mouth the tale is dead,
The path grass grown.
Our sorrow shall follow where thout hast led,
Through the Unknown.

Waitest thou hidden, or quiet rest
What silence forbids?
Give us at least thy unobtained quest
And the flowered meads.

Sob uma luz trêmula e baça,
Se agita, brinca e dança ao léu
A Vida, ululante e devassa.
Assim também, quando no céu

A noite voluptuosa sonha,
Tudo acalmando, mesmo a fome,
Tudo apagando, até a vergonha,
Diz o Poeta que a dor consome:

"Afinal, minha alma e meus ossos
Finalmente imploram por sossego;
O coração feito em destroços,

Procuro em meu leito aconchego
E às vossas cortinas me apego,
Ó treva oferta aos corpos nossos.

Indefinite space, which, by co-substance night,
In one black mystery two void mysteries blends;
The stray stars, whose innumerable light
Repeats one mystery till conjecture ends;
The stream of time, known by birth-bursting bubbles;
The gulf of silence, empty even of nought;
Thought's high-walled maze, which the outed owner troubles
Because the string's lost and the plan forgot:
When I think on this and that here I stand,
The thinker of these thoughts, emptily wise,
Holding up to my thinking my thing-hand
And looking at it with thought-alien eyes,
The prayer of my wonder looketh past
The universal darkness lone and vast.

Something in me was born before the stars
And saw the sun begin from far away.
Our yellow, local day on its wont jars,
For it hath communed with an absolute day.
Through my Thought's night, as a worn robe's heard trail
That I have never seen, I drag this past
That saw the Possible like a dawn grow pale
On the lost night before it, mute and vast.
It dates remoter than God's birth can reach,
That had no birth but the world's coming after.
So the world's to me as, after whispered speech,
The cause-ignored sudden echoing of laughter.
That 't has a meaning my conjecture knows,
But that 't has meaning's all its meaning shows.

LOOKING AT THE TAGUS

She led her flocks beyond the hills,
Her voice backs to me in the wind,
And a thirst for her sorrow fills
All that in me is undefined.

Spiritual lakes walled round with crags
Sleep in the hollows of her song.
There her unbathing nudeness lags
And looks on its pooled shadow long.

But what is real in all this is
Only my soul, the eve, the quay
And, shadow of my dream of this,
An ache for a new ache in me.

LYCANTHROPY

Somewhere dreams will be true.
There is a lonely lake
Moonlit for me and you
And like none for our sake.

There the dark white sail spread
To a vague wind unfelt
Shall make our sleep-life led
Towards where the waters melt

Into the black-tree'd shore,
Where the unknown woods meet
The lake's wish to be more,
And make the dream complete.

There we will hide and fade,
Emptly moon-bound all,
Feeling that what we are made
Was something musical.

LYCANTHROPY

Somewhere dreams will be true.
There is a lonely lake
Moonlit for me and you
And like none for our sake.

There the dark white sail spread
To a vague wind unfelt
Shall make our sleep-life led
Towards where the waters melt

Into the black-tree'd shore,
Where the unknown woods meet
The lake's wish to be more,
And make the dream complete.

There we will hide and fade,
Emptly moon-bound all,
Feeling that what we are made
Was something musical.

DREAM

It was somewhere secluded
In silence and moon.
All like a lagoon.
No cares there intruded
Save the vague winds swoon.

Landscape intermediate
Between dreams and land.
The wind slept, calm-fanned.
The waters were weedy at
Where we plunged our hand.

We let the hand wander
In the water unseen.
Our eyes were with th' sheen
Of the moonlit meander
Of the forest scene.

There we lost the spirit
Of our still being we.
We were fairy-free,
Having to inherit
Nothing from to be.

The fairies there and the elves
Damasked their moonlit train.
There we shall awhile gain
All the elusive selves
We never can obtain.

I feel pale and I shiver.
What power of the moonlight
Tremulous under the river
Thus pains me with delight?

What spell told by the moon
Unlooses all my soul?
O speak to me! I swoon!
I fade from life's control!

I am a far spirit, e'en
In the felt place of me.
O river too serene
For my tranquillity!

O ache somehow of living!
O sorrow for something!
O moon-pain the sense-giving
That I am vainly king

In some spell-bound realm mute,
In a lunar land lone!
O ache as of a dying flute
When we would have't play on!

The edge of the green wave whitely doth hiss
Upon the wetted sand. I look, yet dream.
Surely reality cannot be this!
Somehow, somewhere this surely doth but seem!
The sky, the sea, this great extent disclosed
Of outward joy, this bulk of life we feel,
Is not something, but something interposed.
Only what in this is not this is real.
If this be to have sense, if to be awake
Be but to see this bright, great sleep of things,
For the rarer potion mine own dreams I'll take
And for truth commune with imaginings,
Holding a dream too bitter, a too fair curse,
This common sleep of men, the universe.

No matter now or past or future. Be
Lovers' age in your glee!
Give all your thoughts to this great muscled day
That like a courser tears
The bit of Time, to make night come and say
The maiden mount now her first rider bears!
Flesh pinched, flesh bit, flesh sucked, flesh girt around,
Flesh crushed and ground,
These things inflame your thoughts and make ye dim
In what ye say or seem!
Rage out in naked glances till ye fright
Your ague of delight,
In glances seeming clothes and thoughts to hate
That fleshes separate;
Stretch out your limbs to the warm day outside,
To feel it while it bide!
For the strong sun, the hot ground, the green grass,
Each far lake's dazzling glass,
And each one's flushed thought of the night to be
Are all one joy-hot unity.

THE SHINNING POOL


Go: thou hast nothing to forgive.
To dream is better than to live.

But he shall see the rising sun
Who leaveth everything undone;
Whose mind from his attention's task
Strays like the shifting of a mask.

He only shall through greener vales
Than even those that shine right through
The window-panes of children's tales
Wander, who thinks the world anew.

Only for him who sits and sings
On the stiles and forgets his road
Does the fairies' bird spread her wings
And the fairies' flowers grow more broad.

He shall not find a hand to feed
The silent sources of his need.
No one shall point the rill where he
May slake the thirst of infancy.

But greener valleys than To-Day
And dearer thoughts than Far Away
Shall tap at his window and wake
His freshness other thirsts to slake.

So, like a seamstress sitting still
At a window in the sunset
Of a village no steps have met,
He shall belong to nothing ill,

But incorporeal, like a wish,
His soul shall like a rainbow cross
The rain-green pastures of his loss
And earth shall blossom into speech.

As the lone, frighted user of a night-road
Suddenly turns round, nothing to detect,
Yet on his fear's sense keepeth still the load
Of that brink-nothing he doth but suspect;
And the cold terror moves to him more near
Of something that from nothing casts a spell,
That, when he moves, to fright more is not there,
And's only visible when invisible:
So I upon the world turn round in thought,
And nothing viewing do no courage take,
But my more terror, from no seen cause got,
To that felt corporate emptiness forsake,
And draw my sense of mystery's horror from
Seeing no mystery's mystery alone.

Thy words are torture to me, that scarce grieve thee –
That entire death shall null my entire thought;
And I feel torture, not that I believe thee,
But that I cannot disbelieve thee not.
Shall that of me that now contains the stars
Be by the very contained stars survived?
Thus were Fate all unjust. Yet what truth bars
An all unjust Fate's truth from being believed?
Conjecture cannot fit to the seen world
A garment of its thought untorn or covering,
Or with its stuffed garb forge an otherworld
Without itself its dead deceit discovering;
So, all being possible, an idle thought may
Less idle thoughts, self-known no truer, dismay.

We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the day.
Why should these small denials of the whole
More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract?
Why what it calls «worth» does the captive soul
Add to the small and from the large detract?
So, out of light's love wishing it night's stretch,
A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.

We are born at sunset and we die ere morn,
And the whole darkness of the world we know,
How can we guess its truth, to darkness born,
The obscure consequence of absent glow?
Only the stars do teach us light. We grasp
Their scattered smallnesses with thoughts that stray,
And, though their eyes look through night's complete mask,
Yet they speak not the features of the day.
Why should these small denials of the whole
More than the black whole the pleased eyes attract?
Why what it calls «worth» does the captive soul
Add to the small and from the large detract?
So, out of light's love wishing it night's stretch,
A nightly thought of day we darkly reach.