Outros

In a saloon that is a sleep
Mine eyes did a picture meet,
And wondrously wise and woefully deep
        And horribly complete.
A profound meaning more than tears
Are seen to give, and human fears,
And human madness and woe,
Come as a scent from that picture weird.

The name of the painter is ignored
        And his purpose none do know.

II

Nem defini-la, nem achá-la, a ela —
A Beleza. No mundo não existe.
Ai de quem com a alma inda mais triste
Nos seres transitórios quer colhê-la!

Acanhe-se a alma porque não conquiste
Mais que o banal de cada coisa bela,
Ou saiba que ao ardor de querer havê-la
À Perfeição — só a desgraça assiste.

Só quem da vida bebeu todo o vinho,
Dum trago ou não, mas sendo até o fundo,
Sabe (mas sem remédio) o bom caminho;

Conhece o tédio extremo da desgraça,
Que olha estupidamente o nauseabundo
Cristal inútil da vazia taça.

II

Nem defini-la, nem achá-la, a ela —
A Beleza. No mundo não existe.
Ai de quem com a alma inda mais triste
Nos seres transitórios quer colhê-la!

Acanhe-se a alma porque não conquiste
Mais que o banal de cada coisa bela,
Ou saiba que ao ardor de querer havê-la
À Perfeição — só a desgraça assiste.

Só quem da vida bebeu todo o vinho,
Dum trago ou não, mas sendo até o fundo,
Sabe (mas sem remédio) o bom caminho;

Conhece o tédio extremo da desgraça,
Que olha estupidamente o nauseabundo
Cristal inútil da vazia taça.

Sorrow sits by my side
Fondling my careless hair.
She is the lady of golden
Gestures to silence beholden.
Only she does not deride
My dreams and what makes them fair.

Now she doth cease and whisper
The use of dreams to my soul.
She tells me they mean God's blessing
The spirit's shining releasing
From the world's weight and sister
To life's unchanging whole.

Oh for a less meaningless horizon than the land and the sea!
Oh for a rest from places and a lapse from the sense of times!
Waves, ever waves, to and fro … Ever waves roll, and we
What do we wait, what do we seek, what do we pause for and flee?
What in us lusts for more round us than the strech of minutes and climes?

Ah, and no bark to bear us towards Impossible, and that a real place,
An attainable place, full of the depths and rests of the Unattainable!
But ever the sea, the sea, like the passing of many a face...
Ever the sea, and the sea runs a restless and half-hearted race
Towards not the shore, nor the land, but what? Who can measure or tell?

No ship to bear us homeward, past earth and sea and the sky!
None to spread sails to a breeze blowing but not with a whither!
And ever, like a lost meaning, the sea never passing by,
Ever the measurable sea, sad as a formless cry,
And the most hearts can be is (to) be two and sorrow together!

To-morrow will tire us of all! But we lack heart to be tired indeed
The purpose our souls came for is lost and never stared at...
Let us at least by the shore construe our aches for a deed
Into a meaningless ache and a desolate and purposeless greed...
Become we one with the sea's lost purpose and dream and wish nothing
                                                                                                but that...

Ao dobrar o guardanapo
Para o meteres na argola
Fizeste-me conhecer
Como um coração se enrola.

Não sei que flores te dar
Para os dias da semana.
Tens tanta sombra no olhar
Que o teu olhar sempre engana.

Não sei que flores te dar
Para os dias da semana.
Tens tanta sombra no olhar
Que o teu olhar sempre engana.

Loura dos olhos dormentes,
Que são azuis e amarelos,
Se as minhas mãos fossem pentes,
Penteavam-te os cabelos.

Loura dos olhos dormentes,
Que são azuis e amarelos,
Se as minhas mãos fossem pentes,
Penteavam-te os cabelos.

When the lamp is broken and the shaking
        Light is for ever fled,
There is more memory of its breaking
        Than of the light it shed.
This may common be, but 'tis not glad;
It means many things and all are sad.

Se hás-de ser o que choras
Ter que ser, não o chores.
Se toda a mole imensa
Do mundo ser-te-á noite,
Aproveita este breve
Dia, e sem choro ou cura
Goza-o, contente por viveres
O pouco que te é dado.

Seldom have I so inly comprehended
With a deep sense so awful and so rude
My complete being's complete solitude
In all its arid loneliness extended

So wholly solitude, so much unblended
With aught else, good or ill, that might intrude
Upon its horror limitless and nude
Whereat my reason reels, not by (...) defended.
And save it from itself (…)

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!

No grande espaço de não haver nada
Que a noite finge, brilham mal os astros.
        Não há lua, e ainda bem.
Neste momento, Lídia, considero
Tudo, e um frio que não há me entra
        Na alma. Não existes.

Fierce dreams of something else!
        Frenzy to go away
(O wave in me that swells!)
        From life, where life must stay -
        Life ever at to‑day!

Some other place and thing!
        Not a life! not mine so!
O to be a wind, a wing.
A bark me there to bring!

        Whither? If I could know,
        I would not wish to go.

I.
Once in a theatre comic
’Tween acts I pondered to see
On a column sculptured, wide and comic,
The grinning mask of Comedy;
And broad and wild in satyr-glee,
The grinning face of Comedy.

II.
«Ah,» said I, «face merry and comic,
There is happiness in thee,
Few faces like thine, wide-mouth'd and comic,
Oh, grinning face of Comedy;
Boisterously wrinkled, ugly and free,
The grinning mask of Comedy.»

III.
But as I gazed at the face that smiled,
With mine eyes half-dreamfully,
«Ah,» said I, «it is forced and wild,
Untrue smile of pitiless glee;
Forcedly wrinkled, unreal, unfree,
Hard-grinning mask of Comedy.»

IV.
And I trembled — now it no longer smiled,
It had forcedly smiled — now not even so.
Oh, fearful face, terribly wild,
Terribly silent face or woe;
Worn, hysterical, mad, unfree,
Woe-twisted face of Comedy.

I.
Once in a theatre comic
’Tween acts I pondered to see
On a column sculptured, wide and comic,
The grinning mask of Comedy;
And broad and wild in satyr-glee,
The grinning face of Comedy.

II.
«Ah,» said I, «face merry and comic,
There is happiness in thee,
Few faces like thine, wide-mouth'd and comic,
Oh, grinning face of Comedy;
Boisterously wrinkled, ugly and free,
The grinning mask of Comedy.»

III.
But as I gazed at the face that smiled,
With mine eyes half-dreamfully,
«Ah,» said I, «it is forced and wild,
Untrue smile of pitiless glee;
Forcedly wrinkled, unreal, unfree,
Hard-grinning mask of Comedy.»

IV.
And I trembled — now it no longer smiled,
It had forcedly smiled — now not even so.
Oh, fearful face, terribly wild,
Terribly silent face or woe;
Worn, hysterical, mad, unfree,
Woe-twisted face of Comedy.

Sometimes in the middle of life a change
Suddenly comes like an alienation
A sense of voidness enormous, strange
And a void, deep desolation.

A sense of being left alone
And more and more than abandoned
(…)
'Tis a sense half as if I were dead.

Dois é o prazer: gozar e o gozá-lo.
Ao néscio elege o parvo, o sábio ao outro.
        E o igual fado é diverso.
Na taça que ergo, ondeio, e vejo, as bolhas
Incluo no que sinto, e ao beber
        Mais puro está no gosto.

If I could carve my poems in wood,
By children they would be understood,

So near to the sense things have in God
Are both my poems and children's thought.

For a child knows that logic and meaning
Are only nothing nothing screening,

And a child is one divinely aware
That all things are toys and all things are fair,

That a thimble, a stone and a cotton‑reel
Are things we can quite divinely feel,

And that, if we make men out of those things,
They are really men, not imaginings.

I would therefore l could take my verse
Out of mere ideas and better it worse

To visible carving or drawing or what
My verses could be resembling that.

Then would I be the children's poet,
And, though perhaps I might never know it

With the outer sense that makes life sadder,
In every innocent face made gladder

God would be giving my soul the sense,
Lost back of knowledge, of recompense ­-

The sense of children more children still
When, acting my poems at their glad will,

They, playing with toys, with legs incurled,
Lightly err the visible world.

The day is sad as I am sad,
But that no moment can abate
That pang that is all I have had
To take with me and see and feel
While life goes by like a mere wheel.

No. Deeper things than skies and plains
Are dark and lower'd o'er in me.
My sorrows are more empty pains
Than of which plains landscapes can symbols be.
And my own [?] weight of life and self
Resembles nothing but itself.

Puseste a mantilha negra
Que hás-de tirar ao voltar.
A que me puseste na alma
Não tiras. Mas deixa-a estar!

Se eu te pudesse dizer
O que nunca te direi,
Tu terias que entender
Aquilo que nem eu sei.